Corn chowder

My friend Amanda made this one day when I was over for dinner years ago and I only got around to trying her recipe for it last night. I changed a few things from her recipe to make it faster to cook, it still turned out so good. You can change the amounts of water and cream as you're going along at the end depending on how the consistency looks.


Ingredients:
1/2 stick of butter (about 50g)
Half an onion
2 sticks of celery
2 cups of water
2 potatoes
200g frozen corn kernels
1 can of creamed corn
2 tbps sugar
1 tbps salt
A little pepper
3 tbps flour
About 250ml cream


Preparation:

1) Defrost the frozen corn.

2) Cook the potatoes, peel them and chop them into small cubes.

3) While the potatoes are cooking, get a large saucepan that you'll be using for the chowder and put in on medium heat.

4) Chop the celery and onion into very small pieces.

5) Melt the butter in the saucepan and toss in the flour, mix together constantly for a couple of minutes until it forms a roux.

6) Add the celery and onion to the mixture and stir them in. Cook for about 5-10 minutes until they're all soft but not going brown. Stir or toss around often so it doesn't stick to the bottom.

7) Add the water, potatoes, corn, creamed corn, sugar, salt and pepper and stir together well. Use a potato mashed to crush the ingredients together for a few minutes while that starts cooking. This will leave it fairly chunky. Alternatively, if you prefer it smoother you can use a wire whisk. Cover the saucepan and reduce the heat until it's just simmering. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring every few minutes.

8) Add the cream and stir well into the chowder. Leave it to simmer for another 5 minutes and it should be ready. You can add more cream or water during this step as necessary depending on how the consistency looks.

9) Leave to cool for a few minutes and it's ready to serve.