Scallop Corn Chowder

Rain in El Paso is an event. Not like rain in other places, where it falls and people complain and life goes on. Here, in the desert, rain is a visitation. It arrives and everything stops — the dust holds still, the air changes, the city looks up. We got two days of rain this week, Tuesday and Wednesday, and the leak in the bakery roof that I thought Luis fixed in January came back like a relative you hoped had moved away.

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Luis put a bucket under the drip and said he'd fix it on the weekend. The bucket sat in the corner of the dining area, collecting water with a plop-plop-plop that the regular customers found amusing and I found humiliating, because a bakery with a bucket in the corner is a bakery that looks like it is failing, and looking like you are failing is halfway to failing, and I have not come this far — across the bridge, through the fear, through the loans and the 3 AM mornings — to fail because of a leak.

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But the customers didn't care about the leak. Doña Esperanza, who comes every morning at 6:30 for her café con leche and two conchas, looked at the bucket and said, \\"Mija, my house has three leaks. Yours has one. You are winning.\\" And I laughed, because Doña Esperanza has been coming since we opened and she has a way of saying the exact thing I need to hear at the exact moment I need to hear it, and I think this is not coincidence but grace.

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Diego had a science fair project due this week — a model of the solar system made from styrofoam balls and paint. He worked on it at the kitchen table every night, tongue sticking out the way it does when he is concentrating, and Luis helped him paint Jupiter because Luis is good with his hands and also because Diego asked, and Diego asking his father for help is rare enough to be precious. Sofia sat at the other end of the table doing homework and pretending not to watch, but she was watching, because Sofia watches everything in this family with the eyes of someone who is memorizing it for later.

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I spoke to Carmen this week about Rosa. Carmen says Rosa is not well — the diabetes is worse, she is losing weight, her vision is going. Carmen wants her to come to El Paso, to see American doctors, but Rosa says no, she will not leave Juárez, she will not leave the house Alejandro built, she will not leave the kitchen where she cooked for forty years. Rosa is stubborn the way mountains are stubborn — not because they choose to be but because they cannot be anything else. I understand this. I got my stubbornness from her.

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I made sopa de fideo this week — thin noodles toasted in a dry skillet until they're golden, then simmered in a tomato broth with garlic and cumin. It is the simplest soup in Rosa's repertoire and also the most comforting, the one she made when we were sick, when we were sad, when the electricity went out and there was nothing in the kitchen but noodles and tomatoes and love. I made it because the rain made me melancholy and melancholy makes me cook Rosa's food, and Rosa's food makes me feel close to Rosa, and feeling close to Rosa is the only medicine I know for the fear that is growing in me like a weed I cannot pull.

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Camila drew a picture of the bakery this week — with crayons, on the back of a menu she found in my bag. She drew the building with a big door and smoke coming from the roof (not smoke, I told her, steam — but she doesn't know the difference yet, and anyway, in crayon, they look the same). She drew me standing in front of it, very tall, with very large hands. I asked why the hands were so big and she said, \\"Because you make bread with them, Mamá. Bread hands have to be big.\\" I put the drawing on the refrigerator. My refrigerator is running out of room.

Sopa de fideo was the only thing that made sense that afternoon — the rain, the melancholy, Camila’s drawing still drying on the refrigerator door. But some evenings ask for something heavier, something that anchors you to the table and keeps you there a while. This scallop corn chowder is that kind of meal — thick with bacon and sweet corn and seared scallops that remind me of the coast where Rosa’s sister lived, where we ate chowder from clay bowls and watched the boats come in. I make it now when I need to feel full in every sense of the word, and I think Rosa would have loved it.

Prep Time: 30 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Total Time: 1 hr | Servings: 10

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds yellow potatoes (3 cups once peeled and cubed)
1 pound bacon
5 ounces salt pork, diced small
8 tablespoons butter, divided
1 cup celery, diced
2 cups sweet onion, diced
1 tablespoon garlic, minced
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups bottled clam juice
1 14.5-ounce can good quality creamed corn
2 14.5-ounce cans good quality kernel corn, NOT drained
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon dry thyme
1/2 teaspoon celery salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Few dashes of your favorite hot sauce
2 pounds sea scallops
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
Grilled toast slices, for serving

Instructions

Prep the potatoes. Peel and cut potatoes to bite-sized pieces and keep in a bowl of cold water for now to stop from oxidizing.
Cut the bacon. Cut the sliced bacon slab into quarters to make it easier to fit in the pan to cook.
Cook the bacon. Place a 6-quart Dutch oven over medium-high heat and add the bacon and cook until crisp. Remove to paper towels and when cool, crumble for serving later in this recipe. Pour off and save bacon fat, leaving a little in the pan bottom.
Crisp the salt pork. Heat pan again to medium-high and add the salt pork and cook until crisp.
Sauté the aromatics. Leave the salt pork in the pot and add 3 tablespoons of butter to the fat and once melted, add the celery, onions and garlic and cook for three minutes.
Build the chowder base. Drain the raw potatoes and add to the pan along with the stock, clam juice, creamed corn, kernel corn with liquid, Worcestershire sauce, thyme, celery salt, black pepper and hot sauce. Cooking the potatoes in the chowder will help thicken it.
Simmer. Bring to a boil, lower to a simmer and cook ten minutes uncovered or until potatoes are tender.
Prep the scallops. Remove the muscle from the side of each scallop and pat the scallops dry with paper towels.
Sear the scallops. While the chowder is simmering, in a large wide skillet over high heat, add a tablespoon of bacon fat and three tablespoons of butter and once hot and frothy, add half the scallops not touching each other and sear for a minute or two on each side. Remove to a plate and repeat for the remaining scallops. Let them cool a bit and once cool, quarter each one and set aside. They may not be fully cooked but will cook further in the chowder. Better to undercook than overcook in this step.
Make the roux. Lower the pan heat to medium-low and stir in the flour and cook for two minutes, stirring often.
Thicken the chowder. Remove from heat and scoop out a few ladles of the chowder liquid and place in the pan with the cooked flour and butter and stir to combine and thicken, then pour back into the chowder scraping up every last bit with a rubber spatula and stir to combine.
Add cream and scallops. Lower heat to medium-low and add in milk, cream and the cooked scallops along with any liquid collected from the plate.
Finish with butter. Remove all heat from the chowder and stir in the remaining butter. Taste and add salt only if needed.
Serve. If serving with grilled toast, cut French, Italian or Ciabatta bread into slices, butter lightly and grill on a hot grill pan and serve with the chowder along with the cooked crumbled bacon.

Nutrition (per serving)

Scallop Corn Chowder — The Kind of Bowl That Holds You Together