Clam And Smoked Haddock Chowder

30 or so clams
250g of smoked haddock, skinned, boned and cut into chunks
Some butter
An onion, diced cut finely
50g of bacon bits
2 potatoes cut into small chunks
350 ml of fish stock
120 ml of cream or substitute
Parsley
Broken biscuits
Salt
Pepper

First, clams. Put them in some water and give them a wash and scrub. Any clam that isn't closed, discard. Then put in a pan with lid that seals well, put in a glass of water and steam for a couple of minutes. You want to keep the liquid, so pour the clams into a sieve or colander over a bowl and let cool. Discard any that aren't open, remove the clam meat. If your clams are big, cut them up.

Melt the butter, brown the bacon bits, then soften the onion, all in a pan. Turn this off when cooked. Then in a large saucepan or casserole, cook the potato in the fish stock and cream, it should still be firm. Add the clam liquid and the fish, cook until the fish is done. Stir in the clam meat so that it warms through, adding salt and pepper if needed. Serve with chopped parsley and broken biscuits on top. Served three, generously.

I've not cooked shellfish before, so this was something of an experiment. And they have a reputation of poisoning people if you get them wrong! (They're filter feeders so suck out a lot of stuff from the water, and if there's anything bad in it they'll concentrate it). Anyway, I was cautious, chucking away a couple I didn't like the look of, and it worked out fine. I don't know if the meat in there was especially noticeable, what with the smoked fish, but the clam juice itself made an impression.

As might be expected this was an attempt to use up the fish stock that had been hanging about in the freezer. The chowder recipe I was riffing off actually used milk, but fish stock worked fine.