Seafood Chowder Soup & Garlic Bread

One day I was craving for chowder soup so bad but I realized its gonna be a wait till I don’t know when to have one out in a restaurant, so I decided to make my own one at home.

Surprisingly I can get all the ingredients I need from my online Coles grocery shopping, I only have to buy some Seafood Marinara Mix for $3.00 (250g), and the rest of the ingredients can be easily found in my fridge from the left over regular groceries. The total cost of making a pot for 4 serves will be maximum of $7.00 I’d say. Money saved, crave satisfied!

My husband was so impressed with the chowder I made, so the second time I added puff pastry to make a baked soup and did surprised him. It was a real indulgence at home having some steak and a baked soup at home during the weekend, we all deserve it after a busy week! He loves some garlic bread to go with cream based soup so I just made a quick and easy one, so quick that it only took me 3 mins to make the spread and 5 mins to bake them.

SEAFOOD CHOWDER
Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

250g Seafood Marinara Mix
40g Celery – finely diced
1 medium size Potato – finely diced
1 Onion – diced
1 Small size Carrot – finely diced
3 Tbsp Creamed Corn
1 Tbsp Corn Kernels (fresh/frozen/canned)
3-4 Button Mushroom – finely diced
300ml Thicken Cream
200ml Milk
1-2 Tbsp Flour
1 Tbsp Butter
1 Litre Chicken Stock
1 tsp Coriander
1 tsp Parsley
1 tsp Garlic – minced
Salt & Pepper

METHOD:

1. In a soup pot, add the diced potato, celery, carrot, corn kernels and onion with the chicken stock and boil for 10 mins, and turn to medium heat to cook for another 10 mins or until all the diced ingredients till really soft.
2. Add the creamed corn and mushrooms. Add butter and garlic into the soup.
3. Mix the flour and milk in a bowl until the flour is fully dissolved.
4. Add thicken cream to the pot, also pour in the flour-milk mix and stir well. Let boil. The soup should be thicken a bit more because of the starch. If it’s still too watery and a little extra milk with 1 tsp of flour to do the same, until it reaches your desire consistency.
5. Once boiled, add the Marinara Mix and cook until the seafood is tender.
6. Slightly boil the soup for another 5 mins. Add chopped parsley, coriander and some salt and pepper to taste.
7. Once it reaches the consistency you want, season with pepper & salt and remove from heat.
8. Its ready to serve!

If you would like to have it baked with puff pastry, you will need:

Frozen puff pastry
1 beaten egg

1. Leave the frozen puff pastry in room temperature for it to thaw a little bit.
2. Preheat oven 150 degrees.
3. Trim the size of the sheet of puff pastry
4. Brush the beaten egg around outside of the bowl. Then fill in soup until ¾ full.
5. Cover the bowl with the trimmed sheet puff pastry then brush some eggs on top of the pastry.
6. In a baking tray, place the bowls at least 1 inch apart to make sure heat will goes evenly inside the oven.
7. Gloss the top of the puff pastry with egg wash, then pop into the oven and bake for 15 mins.
8. All done!

Now its the GARLIC BREAD

INGREDIENTS:

Few pieces of any kind of bread, toasts. White, wholemeal, doesn’t matter.

For the Garlic Butter:

1 tsp Spring onion
1 tsp Coriander- chopped
1 tsp crushed Garlic
1 Tbsp Spreadable Butter

METHOD:

1. In a small bowl, mix up all the ingredients to make the Garlic Butter
2. Spread the garlic butter even on each piece of bread
3. Grill or bake for roughly 5 mins or until crunch at 180℃

Done 🙂