Corn and shrimp chowder

This will be my first foray into showing you a recipe through photographs. Please let me know what you think.

This week I made corn and shrimp chowder. I have never made chowder before. I have not made very many soups in fact, mainly preferring my potato soup over all others. Remind me to make that for you sometime. Anyway, I noticed that I had several cans of corn in my cupboard and since I had been making noises about trying chowder for some time now my husband suggested I put the corn to good use in that way. Also, shrimp was suggested but I do not remember by who (whom?). I used this recipe as the basis and then modified it as I saw fit.

First off is an onion. I have to say, this was a big deal for me - I hate onions. But I had a way to get around that, as you will see. So, one small onion gets peeled and chopped.

 Also, a couple of cloves of garlic. I like garlic. Normally I would say they need to be minced but as you will see in a minute, I have a plan for that.

Melt a couple of tablespoons of butter in a large pot and toss in the onions.

  

They will start out looking like this:

  

And then begin turning translucent and soft:

 

Once they get to this point you can toss in the garlic. Do not saute the garlic for more than a minute or so or it will burn and be gross. Next comes my way of dealing with onions in my soup - I pureed them.

 

I'm sorry if you think this is gross. Deal.

Where am I? Right, yes. The onions go back into the pot along with 2 cans of corn.

 

Cook this around a bit, then add in a couple of tablespoons of flour (or skip to the next step, realize you forgot the flour and add in some cornstarch mixed with water. This may or may not have the thickening effect you desire so I will show you another trick to deal with that later).

At this point if you have some chicken broth/stock you may add that in but I didn't have any so I used chicken bullion (that word looks so odd) to make my own "broth". I used 2 1/2 cups approximately (1 bullion cube per 1 cup of water). A little more or less is not a big deal.

 

While this was going on my wonderful husband was detailing the shrimp for me (because I did not realize until I had started that this was something that needed to be done).

 

Doesn't he have nice hands?

While that was going on I was measuring out cheese. I'm not too strict about my cheese measurements, but I put in about 2 cups. If I had had mozzarella I would have used that but I did what I could.

 Get that shrimp in to heat up. I used cooked shrimp which made my life just that much easier.

The heat should be on lowish by now. As you can see in the above picture I have already added in 2 cups of milk. Where is that photo? I have absolutely no idea. Sorry, still working on this photo recipe thing. Anyway.

Give things a stir and see how it's going.

 Pour in cheese, stirring between cups to make sure it melts.

Realize the cornstarch was not enough to thicken soup. So remember a wonderful trick your mother taught you and do this:

Mashed potato flakes. Wonderful invention for thickening soup. I never make instant potatoes, but I always keep a box on hand for situations like this.

Add salt and pepper to taste. My dear hubby added paprika to his.

And you have just made corn and shrimp chowder!

 I was rather proud of myself for this. New things are exciting :)