I recently defrosted a rather large bag of baby scallops with a view to doing number of different dishes, and, as I had quite a bit left over, I decided to do a scallop chowder as well. I departed from my usual way of preparing the basic form and decided to use Chinese dried scallops, also known as Conpoy, for the stock base…

As I was only making a very small soup meal, I used just 2 ½ cups of water along with ¼ cup of white wine for the liquid base. For the flavor, I added 10 medium dried scallops, 1 small dried Shiitake mushroom, 1 small section of celery stalk, plus 1 teaspoon of white peppercorns, and a half teaspoon of Fennel seed. I let this simmer together for a good three hours until the scallops had completely given up their flavor to the broth.

Afterwards, I strained the broth and added a diced medium potato and a half cup of chopped onion. I let this simmer for about twenty minute until the potato was cooked through.

Next, I pureed the solids to produce a nice thick soup base and added just a little salt to taste…

Finally, I added 1 cup of the small scallops along with a half cup of heavy cream and let this finish cooking over low heat until the scallops were cooked through but still tender…

That’s it…