Taree Tuesday
Okay, let me tell you a little story, okay?
My daughter loves clam chowder.
Loves clam chowder. And I'm not, I'm talking real clam chowder, not the New England clam chowder, which is just god-awful.
I don't know what that is. It's not chowder, okay?
Fuck New, uh, fuck that Manhattan clam chowder, okay?
No, I'm talking like real New England clam chowder. Creamy, delicious, thick, salty, got briny.
Got all that good flavor, that good yum yum, right? Okay.
She also loves bread. So she loved the idea of a bread bowl.
And so when she gets, you know, when we go, when I take her out to go ahead and get clam chowder, like sometimes we're out in Santa Barbara,
or, you know, when we were out in Boston, it was like, oh, might as well go ahead and get some clam chowder.
These places are known for some, San Francisco, right? These places are known for clam chowder.
So if we're going to a place where it's like, oh, they have good clam chowder, we're going to get it, okay?
And she likes to get the bread bowl. And understandably so. If you like bread and you like clam chowder, then the two, wonderful, okay?
But there was something I was noticing every time we got clam chowder that started to really piss me off, alright?
And that is the damn bread bowl, okay? My opinion, and again, this is my opinion only,
if you have a different opinion and you want to go on a tirade about it, you do it on your own time, okay?
But for me, there's way too much bread inside a damn bread bowl. It pisses the crap out of me, okay?
Alright, first of all, you're going to dig out half the bread anyway by, you know, using the little, to make the bowl, right?
So you're going to cut into that bread bowl, right? You're going to cut a big chunk of that bread and pull it out.
And you give that bread to the people to use and eat, right? To dip and to eat in whatever way possible, okay?
You should not be leaving a huge chunk of bread inside the damn bread bowl. You know what ends up happening?
I end up getting just soggy bread halfway through the bowl. That's ridiculous, okay?
I paid for clam chowder and a bread bowl, but I did not pay for less clam chowder and more bread.
That is not what I paid for, alright? So all these places that serve up bread bowl, y'all need to do better, okay?
Here's what I want you to do. I want you to start cutting the bowl out. When you cut it out, I want you to cut it at an angle
where you get at least about three-fourths of the bread out, okay? Not half, three-fourths of the bread out, okay?
I measured it out by ideal thickness of that bread bowl, right? First of all, you need to maintain structural integrity, okay?
It's not going to be a bread bowl if it doesn't have structural integrity. So it needs to stay up.
Once you put the soup in, it needs to hold its own. Usually you're going to use a sourdough bread bowl.
That sourdough has a hard outer crust. It's going to do a great job of holding together, okay?
Usually what I find for structural integrity is that about two to three millimeters is sufficient, okay?
You can maybe go up to four millimeters, you know, half an inch at most, if you want to go inches, right?
Half an inch at most, right? Would be more than enough, but I'm also fine with a little bit more than that in terms of bread, right?
And the thickness of the bread for the outside crust, okay? You could do that, okay?
And then put the soup in, and then you'll get the perfect ratio of bread, soggy bread, with the crust that you get at the end, right?
You know, like at the end you're done, you know, eating all the soup, and then you're just left with the soggy inside, and then you still have the crusty outside, right?
You get the perfect ratio so that you could get the flavor of the clam chowder while still having the flavored bread, right, with the crisp on the outside, okay?
And here's the thing, you would still get, if you love the bread part of the bread bowl, right, and you're like, oh no, you're crazy, like you want to, you know, you want to have more bread.
Here's what's wonderful, okay? You cut out all that bread, you're going to give it to the customer anyway. You're going to give it to the customer anyway.
So you, if you love bread, you're going to have all that bread anyway, and you could go ahead and dip it in the clam chowder.
If you like soggy bread, if that's your thing, fine. You could go ahead and just dunk as much of that extra bread that they cut out, and then just dump that right into the soup, and have as much of the soggy bread as you want, okay?
Everyone gets what they want. Best of both worlds, okay?
But you don't get that if you decide to only cut out, right, half the bread that's inside that bread bowl, leaving me with less soup, and leaving me with way too much soggy bread if I don't like soggy bread, okay?
Or if I only like a certain amount. I usually like soggy bread with the right amount of the crisp, crispy outer layer, okay?
But this is completely, it's a, it's a, oh! I'm just telling you how the words work, okay?
I do not know why all of these bread bowls are served in this way. Somebody needs to explain to me.
I cannot, for the love of me, I cannot think of a reason why they would do this unless they're just trying to give you less clam chowder.
That is the only rationale that could be, that actually makes any sense to me.
Because taking out more bread will not impact structural integrity of the bread bowl.
It will not impact how much bread you get to eat. The only thing it impacts is how much clam chowder you get.
So are you just being cheap, or is there something else going on that I just am not seeing?
If you could give me a good reason, I'll accept it. But I have not heard a good reason yet.
And anyone who tells me otherwise and tells me that no, we need to maintain more bread inside these bread bowls,
like it's good that there's so much bread inside the bread bowls, y'all are a bunch of sociopaths, okay?
You don't know what you're talking about. This is insane.
Give me more clam chowder, dammit. Give it to me!