Aotearoa & Maori · Soup
Kūtai and Kūmara Chowder
- Intermediate
- 45 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a briny, maritime salinity, lifted green at the very end.
Ingredients
- 2 kg live green lipped mussels (kūtai)
- 250 ml water
- 500 g golden kūmara, in 1.5 cm dice
- 1 onion, finely diced
- 2 celery stalks, finely diced
- 40 g butter
- 30 g plain flour
- 500 ml full cream milk
- 150 ml cream
- 2 bay leaves
- white pepper
- a handful of parsley, chopped
The skills inside
Sweating aromatics: soft, never brownedSteaming: basket, leaf and lidStraining & passing through a sieveKeeping the cooking liquidKnife cuts: dice, julienne, bias
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · shellfish · molluscs · celery
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Scrub the mussels and pull each beard down towards the hinge; throw out any that stays open when you tap it.
- Steam them in the water under a lid over high heat and lift each one out the moment it gapes, three to four minutes for the lot; pick the meat and strain the liquor through muslin to drop the grit.
- Sweat the onion and celery in the butter until translucent with no colour, stir in the flour and cook it two minutes, until it smells of biscuit.
- Whisk in the mussel liquor, then the milk and bay, add the kūmara and simmer until the dice is tender but still holds its edge, about 15 minutes. 15 min
- Off the heat, stir in the cream, the mussel meat, white pepper and parsley and warm it through without letting it boil.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Keeping the cooking liquid 60 recipes
- It was actually kept: the liquid went into a container rather than down the drain, and the volume saved is enough to be worth using.
- It is clean: strained of solids and grit, and not clouded with the debris of whatever broke up in it.
- It tastes of what it cooked and tastes concentrated rather than washed out, and it is not so salty or so bitter that the only honest use is the bin.
- It was cooled quickly and stored cold, not left standing warm on the stove to be dealt with later.
- Used, it does the job the dish gives it (carrying flavour into a sauce, loosening the dish, or setting when chilled) rather than merely adding water back.
Where it goes wrong The pot was left to cool slowly on the stove and only strained the next day, so it soured overnight: what should have been the best ingredient in the dish goes in the bin, and the recipe gets water instead.
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes
- Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
- Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
- The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
- Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
- Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.
Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Albariño or Muscadet
- Also Right
- Assyrtiko or Vermentino
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with lemon
The Atlantic’s whites beside the sea’s own liquor: salinity in sympathy, acid keeping everything bright.
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