Freeze bream fillets to make tasty chowder later
Joe Mosby

By loose definition, chowder is a thick soup that includes chunks of potato. The variations can be endless, too, and the one here is used for illustration and also as a means to put something on the table from ingredients close at hand.

Bream is a catchall term in Arkansas that covers bluegill, red-eared sunfish, green sunfish that are also known as rice field slicks and several more small members of the sunfish family. Largemouth bass, smallmouth bass and crappie are also sunfish.

Bream are excellent to eat, every bit as tasty as crappie. But bream are too small for some fish eaters to become enthusiastic about.

Experienced bream fishermen, in addition to knowing how to fillet bream effectively, have a technique worth learning, and that is to poach or steam the small fillets then freeze them for later use.

This recipe is one of those later uses.

Bream Corn Chowder

1 quart water

Dice 1 onion

Dice 2 potatoes (medium size)

Dice 1 bell pepper

1 can whole kernel corn 1 can cream corn

1 can cream of mushroom soup, undiluted

1 can celery soup, undiluted

8 ounces cooked bream fillets, cut into small pieces

1 cup milk

Salt and lemon pepper to taste

Cavender's Greek seasoning to taste (optional)

Cook the potato and onion over medium heat about 10 minutes. Add the green pepper and cook about 5 minutes more. Add corn and soup, add seasonings, lower heat and simmer about 15 minutes. Stir occasionally so it doesn't stick. If the mixture seems too thick, add some water. When everything seems tender and blended, add the bream, add the milk, stir well and serve hot.

The amount of milk is not exact - just pour some in until the consistency seems OK. Very little salt is needed for most people since the canned ingredients tend to furnish this need

All sorts of seafood variations can be used. Canned crab meat is one, and so is tiny cooked shrimp or larger cooked shrimp cut into pieces.

Crab and shrimp can be combined. This recipe serves six generously. For a larger crowd, add a potato or two, more onion and more water and/or milk.

More options can include some shredded carrot, some chopped celery or some sliced or diced mushrooms.

By tradition, chowder made with milk or cream is New England chowder. A chowder made with no milk but with tomatoes is Manhattan chowder. In this bream corn chowder, the tomatoes instead of milk switch can also be made.

The non-exact amounts listed above include standard No. 303 cans of the corn and regular-size soup cans. The 8 ounces of bream fillets can be more, less or just whatever you have on hand.

This bream corn chowder is a hearty main dish. Round out the meal with crackers of some kind, with toast or even tortilla chips. A green salad and your choice of beverage are apropos.

Joe Mosby is the retired news editor of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and Arkansas' bestknown outdoor writer. His work is distributed by the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. He can be reached by e-mail at jhmosby@cyberback. com.