Crab Chowder with Cilantro Pesto

*Updated April 2022 as I visited my faraway child in KL... 

This is a family favorite and one of my daughters, my faraway child, is craving this soup. The challenge is to bring what is a fairly simple chowder recipe to her high-rise apartment in Kuala Lumpur. I'm crossing my fingers that she can enjoy this tasty chowder while abroad.  We found everything - except crab. There are small clawed crabs in the market - but not what you want to sit and pick apart to make chowder. So we used scallops and one lobster tail (that wasn't worth the cost).

My hope is that my daughter will play with the recipe to find ways to make it her own. Different chilies for the pesto; fish or other seafood for a crab substitute. Homemade fish or chicken stock made with green onions and ginger - there are so many ways that she will be able to experiment and have fun. For now, however, she wants the 'taste of home' - so we tried to make it as close to our NW favorite as we could.

Let's get started!

Crab Chowder with Cilantro Pesto

Makes 2 quarts (8 cups) or 1.8 liters

Shopping List:

  • 4-8 oz. of bacon/pancetta/prosciutto/Canadian bacon – all cured ham products that have fat. We used prosciutto the first time around. 
  • 8-10 oz of crab meat. Crab is hard to find - so we tried scallops. Other ideas: shrimp/shrimp balls, a meatier white fish like halibut or monkfish might work too.
  • 1large leek. Leeks in KL are thinner and sold often together. We used three.
  • 12 oz small potatoes (about 3 -4) – red, yellow – just not baking potatoes.
  • Cilantro – it usually comes in bunches. Crush leaf with fingers to make sure you don’t get parsley.
  • 1 jalapeno chili – handle carefully. Couldn't find jalapenos at the local market so grabbed a bag of green chilies. We tested them to see how hot they were - and they were much more mild than the traditional jalapeno. Can keep trying different chilies for different heat. Can freeze what you don’t use
  • Head of garlic
  • 1-2 avocados
  • 1-2 limes
  • 1 carton of Chicken broth. Will use half a carton (2 cups). Watch the salt content as the crab will be salty. The Pacific Vegetable stock would NOT work here and many of the chicken stocks are very, very strong on the chicken flavor - so play with this, make stock - and see how it differs.
  • 8-10 oz of hominy. We couldn't find hominy so we left it out, adding more potatoes
  • Small container (1/4 cup is 2 oz. You can use more or less) heavy cream/whipping cream or half & half
  • Vegetable oil
  • Olive oil
  • dry white wine (with some leftover for dinner). A pinot gris worked well. 

* if you want to make extra pesto – get extra cilantro and make sure you have enough garlic and chili. I think the jalapeno needs to be at the minimum halved for the recipe as written – so one should do a double recipe just fine. 

Equipment:

  • 3 quart (3 liter) soup pot (liters are approx. equal to quarts – not exact, but close) Her new stockpot worked perfect!
  • skillet (optional)
  • A small food processor or blender for the pesto

Other Time: 30 minutes

Yield:  Makes 2 quarts; 4 to 6 servings

Shopping done in KL


Making the Cilantro Pesto:

This tasty pesto can be made in larger batches and then frozen. Initially freeze the pesto in ice cube trays or a muffin tin so you can pull out what you need when you want to add some zest. 

  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1 cup cilantro, chopped
  • 1 fresh jalapeño chili, seeded, lightly chopped 
  • 1-2 cloves garlic
  • juice of 1/2 a lime - or more to taste

Here are your basic ingredients: a big handful of cilantro, garlic, a chili, and the two oils. I also add in a little lime juice and salt to taste. Wash the cilantro really well - it is sometimes sandy. 
I use at least two cloves of garlic. Use the flat of a knife against the papery skin of the garlic and give it a good hit. The garlic gets crushed (great way to get garlic flavor into any dish) and the paper is easy to remove.

BE CAREFUL cutting up the chili. The chili here is huge - so I used half and froze the rest. I also remove the seeds to bring down the heat a bit. WASH HANDS after handling the chili-  there is nothing more painful then scratching your eye with a hand that has been working with chilis!


Using a blender, hand blender, or food processor, puree all the ingredients until smooth. Leftovers – as said above – can be frozen. It will also keep in the fridge. Its really nice for avocado toast, on fish or shrimp




Avocado topping:

  • 1 avocado
  • 1 teaspoon lime juice
  • salt and pepper or chili spice to taste

Chowder:

Ingredients with measurements: 

  • 2-3 slices bacon/pancetta/prosciutto/Canadian bacon
  • 1 large leek (KL: 3-4 thinner leeks) – white part, sliced thinly, rinsed well for sand
  • 1/2 cup dry white wine
  • 2 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth (because the crab will be salty)
  • 2 cups water
  • 1 cup hominy, drained and rinsed 
  • 12 ounces red thin-skinned potatoes (3-4)– scrubbed and cut into ½ inch chunks
  • salt – check taste first
  • 1/4 cup whipping cream/heavy cream or ½ cup half & half with tablespoon of flour
  • 8 ounces Dungeness crab, cooked and shelled

*** Note about salt. This is one of the few recipes that I do not add salt at various stages. Both the prosciutto and crab are salty - so oversalting can be a BIG problem. Leave the salt and pepper to the end (after tasting your pesto) - and add then.

Okay - so let's talk prep.

Leeks are a lovely mild onion

Leeks are grown in sand so it is important to clean them well. Slice off the bottom and, in this case, slice down the middle of the white part. Wash between the layers.


For most recipes calling for leeks, we only use the white part.

Rinse Hominy and cut potatoes into bite sized pieces

Optional Skillet Use: In a skillet over medium-high heat, cook bacon, chopped, until fat starts to render. I'm careful about using bacon. American bacon has such an overpowering flavor that it can easily suffocate the crab. Try only one or two slices if attempting with American bacon. If using prosciutto, add a little olive oil to the pan and gently fry the prosciutto until it starts to brown. Remove from pan and put on some paper towels. When prosciutto cools, cut or crumble.  Discard all but 1 teaspoon fat from pan. 

If there wasn't any fat in pan (prosciutto is lean), add a pat of butter or a little olive oil to the pan. On low-medium heat, add leeks. The goal is to have the leeks "wilt" not brown. 

When the leeks have softened, add wine and the crumbled bacon/prosciutto to the pan. Simmer (low heat) until the wine is almost evaporated. Take skillet off burner and get your soup pot out.

*The skillet directions above were written prior to the faraway child having this beautiful new stock pot (as seen below). The sequence of ingredients is the same - just use the stockpot for cooking up the prosciutto and leeks. One pot cooking means one less pot to wash!
New pot working well in KL




Almost there!  To your soup pot add the stock and water, the potatoes and hominy; and finally, the leek mixture. Bring this up to a gentle boil - and then turn heat down to simmer. The new goal is to cook the potatoes so that you can stick a fork in them. 

On a nice low simmer, add your crab.

Add the cream. If you want it a bit thicker, mix some of the cold cream with a tablespoon of flour before adding to the chowder. Gently cook until heated through and - voila! - you are done. 


Add your toppings as desired. As my faraway child knows, we actually like to just add a big dollop of that amazing pesto into the soup at the end. 



Chowders are great basic soups that can be made with crab, lobster, clams, shrimp, salmon or any thicker fish. Monkfish would work well. Chowders can be made with chicken too. Many chowders use fresh corn kernels instead of hominy. Hominy is created from dried maize corn kernels. It's not an important ingredient for a good chowder - you can use corn or even a white bean. 

This recipe originated from Sunset magazine, FEBRUARY 2006 – they say: Wine pairing: With the rich crab, pungent chile, and herbal cilantro, we like a creamy, minerally Pinot Gris. Cline's Pinot Grigio-Chardonnay blend (California; $11) is great as well.


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