Boston "Chow" Party

Soups and it has to be "Piping hot" 

"Piping hot" an idiom so common on every complaining or whining customers at restaurants and eateries across the world, what dose it actually mean ?

It means very hot, usually in reference to food. 

The phrase is thought to derived from the whistling sound of steam escaping from very hot food. It's usage can be found at least as far back as 1386, when Chaucer wrote: 

"Wafres pipyng hoot out of the gleede" [And waffles piping hot out of the fire]

And it's generally associated with soups,

Thin,thick,clear,chunky,gueey,rusty,spicy,the characteristics never ceases to stop when one tends to talk about soups all over the globe, It could have been mans prehistoric "sorcerer's potion" with nutritional and medicinal properties in it.

Soups, also has so much character in them that they reflect the cultural etymology of its geographical location, and at times it could be even the symbolic irony of a particular era in human history.

I ain't just cooking up stories here  on decoding one of my local classic below is just a brief interpretation,

Mulligatawny (from Tamil is a curry-flavoured soup in Anglo-Indian cuisine.Mulligatawny is a corruption of milagu ("pepper") thanni ("water"). It is similar to rasam a soup from South Indian cuisine.

There are many variations on the recipe for mulligatawny.In the West, the soup typically has a turmeric-like yellow colour and chicken meat, beef, or lamb meat. Often it is thickened with rice.

The characteristics is so much embedded that the era the people the culture all comes out piping hot.

If that ain't enough let's start by decoding another classic this time from the "New World", I would not be surprised if it's very roots are so deep in the hearts of Mayflower( first settlers of new world came in this ship).

Chowder is a seafood or vegetable stew, often served with milk or cream and mostly eaten with saltine crackers. Chowder is usually thickened with broken up crackers, but some varieties are traditionally thickened with crushed ship biscuit. New England clam chowder is typically made with chopped clams and diced potatoes, in a mixed cream and milk base, often with a small amount of butter. Other common chowders include Manhattan clam chowder, which substitutes tomatoes for the milk and cream and typically omits potatoes; corn chowder, which uses corn instead of clams; a wide variety of fish chowders; and potato chowder, which is often made with cheese.

The origin of the term chowder is obscure. One possible source is the French word chaudière, the type of cooking/heating stove on which the first chowders were probably cooked. (This, if true, would be similar to the origin of casserole, a generic name for a set of main courses originally prepared in a dish called a casserole.) Another possible (and maybe more probable) source could be the French dish called chaudrée (sometimes spelt chauderée) which is a sort of thick fish soup from the coastal regions of Charente-Maritime and Vendée.

The phonetic variant chowda, found in New England, is believed to have originated in Newfoundland in the days when Breton fisherman would throw portions of the day's catch into a large pot, along with other available foods.

Fish chowder, corn chowder, and clam chowder continue to enjoy popularity in New England and Atlantic Canada.

Of all the Chowders across America I did have the options to taste a few on my stint out there, 

Notably, The Pier Market seafood chowder is the 3rd on my list even thou few of my guests at a luxury cruise liner thought otherwise, they had even claimed it to be the best, Probably; I could assume it being the in-depth pacific flavor and the egoist response to the question offered by the East coast to West , 

Made with local Dungeness Crab, Bay Shrimp, Mussels, and Clams; this chowder is poured under, over and into a toasted Sourdough Bread Bowl, which rests inside a larger wide rimmed, ceramic bowl. They’ve been using the same recipe since 1948 according to the man piping my soup out,

Diced potatoes (believed to be humble russets) along with the addition of milk, declare this dish, ‘a chowder’. The potatoes are boiled down in salted water. House made clam juice along with ground up saltine crackers (soaked in milk) are added to the potatoes, and the seafood comes last. Diced chives as well as the seafood are cooked together in the mixture (the chives are not used as a separate garnish as would be typical today). The herbs give a little color to this otherwise muted, but very textured and generous bowl.

At No 2 on my elite list is, manhattan Clam Chowder, I first had it somewhere around the year 2005 at a place so clearly stuck in my memory cos, I had been glued to playing "The Godfather" in my PS2 and "The Lobster Place" at Chelsea market New York   reminded me so much about my fantasy world and no wonder, If it's Manhattan it has something to do with Vito Corleone and invariably tomatoes, they just can't get enough of it;

There is more to it;the Portuguese settlers of Rhode Island claims heir to this Devine residue but the twist is simple, the Manhattan clam chowder can be distinguished just by a mere cut of tomato it's chunky dices with a touch of basil and that to me wins it all hands down.

And as for my take on the Winner... I keep this one close to my heart, my fav subject at school was history( yawn yup!!!boring not to me ) talk about Boston, Red sox doesn't flash before my eyes just the lines from my text book which talked about "Boston Tea Party" and it's opium war,

The Red Sox take their chowder so seriously and to safeguard the originality; a 1939 bill making tomatoes in clam chowder illegal was introduced in the Maine legislature. Would you imagine chef behind bars for not safeguarding the traditional recipe; and gimme one good reason why should I not make this one a winner just for that reason alone, Yet, on the very next day when the Redsox had won the World Series 2013 I grabbed a bowl and then a cup of "New England Clam Chowder"  at the historical Quincy Market and all I got to say is AMEN.........