Creamy Shrimp Chupe Chowder

Hola, I'm Daisy Martinez for eHow.com. Today, we're making chupe, a South American chowder that's the perfect remedy for a chilly cold day. I'm starting out some onions and some garlic in olive oil. And what I want to do is I want to start a roux. So, to that we're going to add, some flour, and I don't want any color on this roux. So, we're just going to cook out the flour taste, and you can see it actually start to dry up in the bottom of your pan. And then I'm going to add some chopped tomato, to give this chupe, this chowder some body. If you wanted to, you could add a little Beezil, with that delicious Korean liquor, almost like a grappa, at this point. OK. So, I'm going to add my evaporated milk. Also, if you're watching calories, skim evaporated milk is a wonderful substitution because it gives you that creamy flavor without all of the fat that you would find. And we have clam juice. Now, you could use a rich fish stock. You could use mussel stock, anything like that would be wonderful. And I'd love to say these are my recipes, but the highest compliment you could pay me is to make them your recipes. So, if you have a favorite something, we could add bacon to this. Although not traditional, absolutely delicious. And then we're going to put this on hot, we're going to crank up the heat on this. And we're going to add a lot more broth than it looks like we need, because once this comes to the boil, we're going to add the rest of our components. Our aromatic, I'm going to add some carrots and some corn that is sliced in rings. This makes it really really fun to eat. And some rice. How much rice goes in here is a personal preference. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to bring that to the boil and this is where we are over here. Now, you see that my chowder has thickened up, the rice is cooked, the carrots are soft, the corn is sweet and tender. And now we're going to add our shrimp. Now, if I was making.. in South America they make chupes from everything from just potatoes, to potato with beans, to.. there's nothing you can't make chupe out of. I'm going with the seafood chupe. You could actually add some shell fish, little clams. Or if it's a real special occasion, a lobster chupe would be absolutely incredible. And because the shrimp takes no time to cook, it's the very last thing, well almost the very last thing that I like to add to my chupe. And we're going to cook those just until, just until they're opaque. I don't want to be chewing on pencil erasures. Tweak the seasonings at the very end of course, some fresh ground pepper. And again, this is the opportunity where you get to play with your flavors. With all the beautiful delicious boutique salt and peppers there are now, you could add a smoked.. a smoked salt to this to give it a little you know, bacon feel without the added fat or the meat component. You could add, oh a beautiful salt with maybe some citrus zest, just to give it a little bit of sparkle, some either a lime zest or orange zest. Play with your food, contrary to what your mama told you. OK. And this is bubbling up beautifully. And look at the shrimp, how gorgeous they are, just starting to curl and just turning opaque, gorgeous. And then the very last thing that I.. some baby peas I want to add, for color. Oh, my goodness. That's just too pretty to look at. I'm just going to stir this just to heat the baby peas through. I don't want them to overcook as well. Let's do this. What do you say? So you get a ladle full and you get all of these beautiful shrimp, the corn, you could add potatoes. Now, that's a cozy warm hug from home. I'm Daisy Martinez from eHow.com, and we're making chupe.