• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 248 0

You will need three or four per guest. If you can’t open them yourself, ask the fishmonger to open them for you. Opening them is easy enough once you get used to it, but it takes some practice. You will need a clam knife. I prefer the kind with a somewhat flexible, thin blade. Don’t use an ordinary knife. If you are right-handed, hold the clam in your left hand, against the thumb joint, using your thumb as a clamp. You will notice that the clam is shaped rather like an ear, tightly curled at the top. Look carefully for where the two shells join at the top of this ear. The point is to hold the blade of your clam knife in your right hand (again, if you are right-handed) vertically against this notch, which is not always easy to find, and press the blade with the fingers of your left hand firmly into the notch. Adjust the clam in your hand for maximum leverage. Once you have wedged the blade firmly between the shells, turn the blade ninety degrees and twist the shells apart. Then cut the muscle which attaches the clam to the top shell, and discard the top shell. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t succeed the first or even the fifth time. You will eventually get the hang of it. Another solution is simply to put the unopened clams in a dry pan in a medium oven for ten minutes or so, until they begin to open by themselves. Since you are going to put the clams under the broiler eventually, this unorthodox method won’t substantially change the result, but you will not have had the pleasure of going mano a mano with a clam. If you plan to serve the clams raw, on the half-shell, and they don’t open easily, put them on ice in your freezer for ten minutes or so, and then pry them open. Clam openers at raw bars use this trick.

For my version of two dozen clams casino, you will need a green bell pepper; a sweet onion;a small jar of pimientos or a red bell pepper blistered over a flame, skinned, and diced;a jalapeño;some lemon juice;a half-stick of softened unsalted butter; Worcestershire sauce;and four slices of bacon. Remove the top and bottom and scrape out the seeds from the bell pepper, and cut it into thin julienne strips. Then cut the strips into fine dice. Dice the onion similarly, and chop the pimiento or skinned red bell pepper. There should be roughly equal amounts of each vegetable. Mince the jalapeño extra-fine (no seeds), and add it to the mix. Now wash your hands, lest you inadvertently rub your eyes. Mash two tablespoons or so of softened butter, and an equal amount of Worcestershire, into the vegetable mix. Meanwhile, cut four slices of good bacon into twenty-four pieces and soften them in a pan over a medium flame. Mix a tablespoon of bacon fat into the filling, and place a generous pinch or two on each opened clam, topping each with the softened bacon. Place the clams on a broiler pan, and put them in the refrigerator until you are ready to heat and serve them. When ready to serve, put the clams under a medium broiler until the bacon is crisp but before it burns, and serve while hot. You may want to experiment a bit with the mix.

There are countless varieties of clams, but for practical purposes in the northeastern United States there are only two: hard-shell and soft-shell. Manilla clams, which I prefer for pasta with clam sauce, are imported from the West Coast. Hard-shell clams are the littlenecks (smallest), cherrystones (larger), and chowders or quahogs (pronounced “co-hogs”), the largest, found in most East Coast fish markets. They are eaten raw on the half-shell, or stuffed with oregano and bread crumbs and baked, or as clams casino, or with pasta, though the much smaller manilla clams are more subtle and intense with pasta. Soft-shell clams are less often seen in New York markets but are common in New England, where they are steamed or fried. Hard-shell clams are also steamed, usually with a celery stalk and a sprinkle of chopped parsley, and the two varieties are interchangeable in chowders, but only soft-shell clams are fried. They are eaten raw only by seagulls.

FRIED SOFT-SHELL CLAMS

Soft-shells are