[CH] Re: Legal's recipe
The Old Bear (oldbear@arctos.com)
Tue, 02 Jun 1998 21:04:01 -0400
At 10:18 AM 6/2/98 -0500, Cameron Begg wrote:
>
> >This chowder recipe is delicious, but it will never taste quite
> >the same as Legal's because you can't approximate the concentrated
> >fish base at home.
>
>I hate this patronising codswallop!
>
>What they are saying is "we don't want you to be able to duplicate our
>recipe and so we have given you the wrong directions or ingredients."
>
>I could reduce the stock by vacuum distillation if I had to :-)
>
>In my opinion Legal's chowder tastes much better with a dose of
>powdered chile.
Maybe so, but I'll never know. The irony of my posting this recipe
is that I have a food allergy to fish. :(
I do eat shellfish however (clams, scallops, lobster, crab, mussels)
and calmari. Maybe other things too, but I have not had the
courage to experiment because this is a serious allergy to swimming
fish.
I have a lot of respect for George Berkowitz -- he does a remarkable
job with his restaurants, especially in the area of quality control
of what is probably the last 'wild harvested' thing which is
consumed in the average person's diet. I suspect that it may be
difficult to replicate his stock just because of the shere quantity
and variety of fish bits and pieces to which a restaurant has access,
not to mention the fact that restaurant stocks can be kept simmering
for days without worrying about what it will do the permanent scent
of the livingroom upholstery.
I really can't say if the 'caveat' is condescending codswallop or an
honest disclaimer so that home cooks won't be disappointed in their
results -- or possibly a little marketing puffery to add to the
restaurant mystique. Whatever. Legal Seafoods is still the place
I would take visitors to Boston for the freshest of New England fish.
Cheers,
The Old Bear