“I decided to make the seafood chowder I first ate twenty years ago in the English Market in Cork, Ireland---or at least my own version of that smoky, tomato-based soup with cod, scallops, clams, and shrimp; sometimes (in Ireland), it had periwinkles (sea snails) and enough smoked haddock to give it a wonderful campfire tang. Of course, I had to skip the periwinkles and for the smokiness I made do with frozen finnan haddie. I'd worked on the recipe over the years, cranking the flavors so that when I finally went back to the English Market a couple of years ago, their chowder was so bland and watery that Jack didn't believe it was the same soup I made at home. It was possible that the Irish cook was having a bad day, or someone was trying to stretch the last bit of a used-up batch, or they'd made the recipe from memory for so long, it had ceased being itself---a chef at a good restaurant here in Los Angeles once told me that vigilance is the key to consistency, and that if she or a trusted supervisor didn't keep an eye on the plates as they came out of the kitchen, a dish could become unrecognizable within hours.”