Shrimp & Corn Chowder with Roasted Tomato & Manchego Toasts

“Simple” food in the Marketman household. A good soup and some toasted bread. Just a hint of meat from the crisped bacon, but this could have easily been a “meatless” meal. I spotted some nice corn at a roadside stand driving down from Tagaytay recently, and purchased a dozen or so ears. They were turned into a hearty corn and shrimp chowder following a recipe similar to this one that I posted a couple of years ago…

We made a shrimp stock with the heads and shells of some white shrimp or suahe.

A corn stock from the cobs of corn.

Turned it into a “chowder” with some bacon bits on top.

Took some beautiful cherry tomatoes still on the vine, another purchase on the same drive, from the Toscana Farms farmstand at a gas station on the Silang road, and simply roasted them in a hot oven with some olive oil and salt. I sliced some french bread, topped them with slices of manchego and toasted them in a hot oven, then when they had cooled slightly, topped them with cooled tomatoes. Serve with the hot soup. Delicious, satisfying and visually appealing. A nice dinner at home…

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20 Responses

  1. Will make exactly like this today. Somehow, its been rainy there in Pinas, same here in Houston. 4-days in a row. Soup is going to be great.

  2. I love how this looks…I can only imagine the aroma! Will try to do this at home, I love a good chowder. Thanks for the recipe :)

  3. MM…it is corn season pretty soon here as well! Here is a secret to my corn chowder…save a few WHITE CORN cobs and cut the kernels, pass the kernels in a JUICER and then put the concentrated corn nectar in a bowl. It is redolent of that sweet corn-y essence! I do this if I find the WHITE CORN (which in my book is far better than the yellow and bi-clolored ones)…NOW, BEFORE I GET fish panned by corn experts, it is MY PREFERENCE!!!!….. When ready to serve, just drizzle that white corn nectar over the yellow corn soup. If you have soooooo much corn nectar, freeze them in ice cube trays.

    Has anyone tried drinking COLD CORN MILK? I add some homogenized creamy AVALON MILK to ice cold CORN MILK or nectar…no need to add sugar for the fresh corn nectar is already sweet! Drink it straight up in shot glasses or you can drizzle this over your CREAMED MAIS with shaved ice!

    Another tip…while corn is abundant in the summer, save the corn stock when you boil/steam your corn. Strain, cool and put them in ice cube trays and when frozen, put them in zip plock bags. Come winter when it is soup weather, you have corn stock. I prefer to do this than saving the cobs for the cobs take up too much space in the freezer!

    Then the husk, use it as a garnish by taking out the hard part on the bottom like to the ground level and then folding the tip of the husks underneath the soup bowl.

    Another use for the husk is to soak it in water, barbecue a small portion of salmon fillet (only for a minute or 2) and then wrap it inside the husk tying the tip with a strip of corn husk and then finish it off on a hot grill. When ready to eat, peel off the husk like you would peel a corn, tuck it underneath and spoon mango or nectarine or peach salsa over the top of the salmon….very light dinner on this scorching hot weather here now! Come to think of it, it would make a good vessel for a stuffed STICKY RICE DISH OR prepared /cooked dish like JUNGZ?

    Ebba…while you are still following this post, paki go back na lang on the archives. I think the Ginger-Sesame dressing you wanted is in there. If you are going to use it to make Kahlbi ribs, do not forget to put 1 shinko grated pear for every 10 pounds of thinly sliced short ribs. Also for every 10 pounds of meat, make the dressing 3x.

  4. great tips, bettyq….thank you! since it’s summer, fresh white corn at the farmer’s market every saturday is sooo cheap.

  5. Hi bettyq, we don’t seem to get that nice white corn variety here (though they refer to it as Japanese white corn here) that you use… I have come across it in NY, and I agree, it is sweeter and less fibrous it seems…

  6. Thanks betty q for the wonderful tips!:) Now this is comfort food at its finest. Sarap lalo na it’s raining most of the week.

  7. MM, did you also see any white corn (the small and malagkit variety used for binatog) in the roadside stalls to Tagaytay? I actually prefer those white corn to the yellow Japanese corn.

    Speaking of meatless, not sure if anybody has heard about a Meatless Monday campaign that is currently gaining some momentum in Congress. I only learned about it while browsing through articles at the Inquirer.net. Sounds hard to implement. It’s not like you can ban Jollibee from selling Chickenjoy on Mondays.

  8. So heart warming, MM! I just learned that an ear or two of corn per plant is all one gets …

  9. Yummm….I am a soup person…Love your soup. Chowder of any sort is so good…Soup,salad and bread is enough. Thanks MM n betty q. Your cold corn drink is like our mais con hielo….sounds good. Thanks!

  10. PITS, yup, maybe that’s why they are running PHP12-14 a piece these days at the farmstands… ami, definitely a hard thing to implement… and besides, with 80% of the Philippine population not having enough and nutritious things to eat, its a bit bizarre to be focused on “meatless mondays” don’t you think? If we had 50 million less people on the archipelago, we would need so much less food and produce so much less waste or all sorts… I’d much rather everyone focuses on putting the brakes on population growth than on bizarre (to me) things like Meatless Mondays. I would like to take a crack at Spineless Sundays, Twitty Thursdays, Wacky Wednesdays… I jest. :) If half of the folks who eat at fast food restaurants cooked meals at home instead, imagine the thousands and thousands of kilos of non-biodegradable waste that wouldn’t end up in landfills, esteros, rivers, seas, etc.

  11. I like buying fresh ‘just picked from the farm’ fruits and veggies, and I had always assumed that corn being sold on the roads of Tagaytay were from Tagaytay.

    On one of my recent trips to Tagaytay, maybe 2-3 weeks ago, I had stopped along the road to buy corn. I asked the Manang if the corn was fresh, and Manang replied “Oo! Bagong dating ito! Kakadating lang itong umaga galing sa Pampanga!”

    I have no idea if it was just Manang’s corn, or all the corn along the road. But is corn really grown in Tagaytay? Come to think of it, I mostly see pineapple fields and I don’t recall seeing any corn fields.

  12. his would be a typical dinner for my family too, and we love all kinds of chowder. but because my family prefers thicker chowders, i usually put through the blender part of the corn (or if it’s made with potatoes, some of the potatoes) to thicken the soup a bit. thanks, MM, will definitely try this.

    bettyq, you meant kernels, right, not the cobs? so blitz kernels in the juicer, no? just making sure, because it sounds like a great tip (especially the one about freezing the rest – i never thought about that!)

  13. meekerz, for the most part, I can’t stand many of the “fruit stands” on the way to Tagaytay, for the simple reason that they don’t sell local produce. The most likely local produce are the pineapples, the rootcrops, senorita bananas, coconuts, radishes (near the church), indian mangoes, etc. But the oranges, mangosteens, other fruits are often imported and dropped off from big trucks to most of the roadside vendors. A lot of it comes from Divisoria I am told, and Tagaytay prices are ABSURD. Most of the flowers don’t come from Tagaytay either.

    Having said that, there are lots of corn growers in Silang and Laguna. I once bough corn near one of the campuses on the drive up, and I was in the middle of corn fields while they were harvesting it. And it was superb. They also grow it in Laguna. However, it doesn’t surprise me that they import it at other times… Here is a post of corn I bought once that was definitely local. Note the lush fields in back the tractor harvesting. Fresh corn has a sticky sap on the husks where it was cut off from the stalk. The leaves should be incredibly fresh looking, and the “hair” moist. I do ask vendors where the produce is from, and if they can’t come up with a convincing story, I buy something else. :)

    Corn is best when cooked within hours of harvesting. An overnight wait already degrades the sweetness of the kernels. When I used to visit my sisters on Long Island in New York for the summer, we used to practically start the pot of water to get to a boil, run out to the nearest suki farmstand and get corn that was on the stalk less than an hour or so before and cook that. It was amongst the best corn I have ever had in my entire lifetime…

  14. Corn 101…besides the sticky sap, MM, the silk at the tip ….best if it is really dark brown and the tip of the cob …feels full which means the kernels are nice and plump and not anemic!

    Next time you come over, MM, let us know a year in advance so I can plant corn…MIRAI! …the second best corn ever (again in my book!). Best eaten right at the field after plucking it from the stalk. I gave some to my neighbour at the Community garden last year after he saw me eating a cob within minutes of harvesting it! He said he never tried to eat it raw…now he is hooked and planted MIrai in his plot this year after I bought the seeds for him!

    Millet, yup, the kernels pass thru your juicer…baka mabungi your juicer if you pass the cobs thru!

    You can do the CORN ICE pops too using some condensed milk , corn nectar, buko strips and sweetened azuki beans, etc.

    Hey Gejo…did the white Mirai seeds survive?

  15. Well said MM. I found it surprising that somebody came up with such an absurd (to me) idea in the first place and somebody in Congress is actually taking it seriously.

  16. Great take on the corn chowder soup would a bit dash of saffron on mine :-) I love the shot of the cherry tomatoes on the last I could taste it from here!

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