Chanterelle Chowder with Bacon and Corn

This is where summer and fall collide. Where the cool evenings justify a warm bowl of soup. A meeting of sweet, crisp corn and wilted chanterelles that smell of woods and earth. Bacon and thyme reiterate that earthiness before dill showers over the light creamy broth, bringing with it a fleeting freshness. Really, it’s more fall than summer in this bowl but it is nice to shuck one more cob, tangle with its silky whiskers and pop a few sweet and starchy kernels into my mouth before they soften in the soup.

I’m not quite ready for the heft of a typical chowder made thick with roux so mine is more broth-focused than creamy but you can change that if you’d like. Also, I’ve brought my love of beer to the bowl by deglazing with a lightly colored wheat. The second round of this soup I made the mistake of deglazing with a pungent and hoppy IPA which made the soup bitter. So go with something light or use white wine instead.