Category Archives: clamming

Cooks & Clams

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I feel like I’ve just been run through an intensive 10-week cooking class condensed into a single night. My head hurts—and not just because of all those Grand Cru wines brought home by the House Sommelier. The lesson here: Take a couple professional gourmet chefs clamming and you’ll reap the rewards. Not that it felt like work to get to the meal. I’ll take this troop clamming any day.

My foraging pupils were Becky Selengut, aka Chef Reinvented, who teaches cooking classes at PCC, cooks for hire, and is co-author of the Washington Local and Seasonal Cookbook. Her old colleague from the Herbfarm restuarant, Jet Smith, joined us. And completing the trio was Amy Pennington, the gogogreengardener herself, a former lieutenant to Tom Douglas, creator of Urban Garden Share, and no slouch in the kitchen.

Don’t let the fem pink gloves fool you… Most of the conversation simply can’t be re-printed, as I’m trying to run a family-friendly blog here. I’ve been known to let loose some colorful language myself, but these three make drunken sailors sound prim and more than once did I blush in the hot sun.

We started with the oyster beds, which were fully exposed by a low tide that virtually emptied this small bay in south Puget Sound. A few down the hatch and the rest into the bag.

Did I mention the extraordinary sun? After a libation and bit of sunbathing in the beautiful sun, we attacked the clam beds. With one other clammer in sight, we had the pick of the litter. I don’t think I’ve ever raked up a limit in such record time. The clams were practically jumping out of the sand volunteering for Becky’s Grand Plan. Both native littlenecks and non-native Manila clams filled our buckets. The Manilas have short siphons and can be found just an inch or two below gravelly sand, while the natives are just a little deeper, usually three or four inches beneath the surface. On this day we found mostly Manilas—big ones too.

A patch of sea beans (Salicornia sp.) provided the final treat. We munched on them through the day and took home enough for dinner.

Back at the ranch the cooks started working their magic. A few observations:

 

  • Pros work very quickly. I was still polishing off my second glass of rose champagne and the ladies already had three sauces ready to go.
  • Pros don’t get stressed out, certainly not when entertaining at home for such a small number of guests.
  • Pros make it look simple but their hamster-in-a-treadmill brains are forever concocting fiendish new designs to blow the minds of their hapless victims.

Though I’ll do my best to parse the recipes here, please understand that the chefs were working improvisationally throughout and I don’t think I saw a single measuring cup or spoon on the premises. What follows is an approximation, no doubt made murkier by the myriad wines and champagnes making the rounds. (The alcohol, I now realize, is the equivalent of a forager blindfolding his charges before entering a top secret hunting ground.)

Three Sauces

The first sauce was made by steaming a handful of clams in vermouth, shallot, parsley, and thyme. The clams were set aside for the first course and the broth strained into a blender along with some corn, blended, strained, and cooked down to a smooth sauce in a small pot, seasoned, and set aside.

The second sauce was composed simply of a small handful of parsley, blanched for 5 seconds and shocked with cold water, then blended with olive oil and salt into a cohesive oil which was strained and set aside.

The third sauce was made with a dried ancho pepper, reconstituted in warm water, seeded, and blended with tomato paste, olive oil, and salt.

First Course: Pan-Fried Pacific Oysters with Clams in Corn Sauce and Drizzled with Chili and Parsley Oils

That’s what I’m talking about. We’re not in Kansas anymore is right. The oysters were floured, dipped in egg, and dredged in homemade breadcrumbs, then pan-fried in a generous allowance of butter. These got plated in pyramid formations in shallow bowls ladled with the corn sauce, then topped with a garnish of thinly sliced olives and red onion bathed in red vinegar to turn a jaunty fuchsia. Steamed clams and drizzles of chili oil and parsley oil completed the sumptuous picture.

I mean, isn’t that what any of us would do with a few fresh oysters?

Second Course: Cambodian Shellfish Amok

I’ve actually made a dish similar to this, and the beauty is just how simple it is for us normal home cooks to make. My contribution on this night was to scrub the clams, which is kinda important since freshly foraged clams will have slimy stuff on their shells, while Amy scrubbed and de-bearded the mussels. Onions and kaffir lime leaves got sauteed in coconut oil in a big pot with amok powder and Thai bird chilies. Our pile of shellfish, about 140 clams and two-dozen mussels in all, was then dumped into the pot along with a can of coconut milk and steamed. The shellfish hotpot was finished with fresh lime and cilantro, and served with baguettes for dipping up the curry-like broth.

Third Course: Oyster and Sea Bean Succotash with Stir-fried Bok Choy

We finished off the meal with a southern twist, using the bok choy as a bridge from the previous course. Chopped bok choy and onions were stir-fried with diced bacon while the succotash was composed of corn, blanched sea beans, chopped oysters, steamed and chopped carrots, chopped shallots, blanched fava beans, and diced bacon, all of which got sauteed together in bacon grease and butter.

The succotash really got me. I’m rendered helpless in the presence of salty-sweet; a night at the ballpark can’t be fully consummated without a bag of kettle corn, and usually I’ll eat myself right into a barf bag, such is my weakness for salty-sweet. In this case, the sweetness of the corn and carrots married with the saltiness of the oysters and sea beans, while the crispy bacon and fava beans added textural complexity. It was a dish that, on the face of it, looked so easy, and yet its flavor was as good as anything I’ve ever eaten. I watched it happen right before my eyes and still can’t believe how good it was.

And I suppose that’s how I feel about the meal in general. Yeah, I was there to witness it but I couldn’t quite believe my senses. Our Wine Sommelier, April, who came home to this feast after a late night pre-opening party for the Grand Cru Wine Bar over in Bellevue, is one lucky lady.

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone!

Cioppino

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WHAT’S IN A NAME?  In our anxiety-prone food culture we tend to get uptight about the smallest lexical tics and demarkations. For instance, is it a Bouillabaisse or a Cioppino? How about Fish Soup—that seems to work pretty well. Italians mostly call dishes like this Zuppa di Pesce—Fish Soup. Occasionally Ciuppin. And sometimes Brodetto… Okay, you get the idea.

A Brodetto is a regional Italian variation found along the Adriatic that calls for special inclusion of the scorpionfish, or scorfano. Bouillabaisse is the Provencal word for essentially the same thing. All involve a mixture of both finned fish and shellfish, cooked in a tomato and wine-based stew, with peasant bread for sopping up the rich broth.

Cioppino, legend has it, is a New World invention—the word, that is. Italian immigrants shipping out of San Francisco to fish the Pacific ate Cioppino at sea—the catch of the day plus whatever other ingredients they had on board. The word derives from ciuppin, which translates as “chop”—in other words, chop it all together and make soup.

That’s what I love about Cioppinos and their ilk. When you can get past the regional claims, prejudices, and pronouncements, a Cioppino is merely an efficient way to make use of the odds and ends hanging around in the fridge. But to do it right you still need a variety of fish. Make it with either red wine or white; with spicy peppers or saffron; with fennel or celery. Just make it. You won’t be disappointed.

Here are my ingredients this time around. Remember that you can use just about anything that swims in the sea, or that filters salt water, as the case may be. Squid add lots of flavor. Just about any firm white-fleshed fish is a good choice; avoid more fragile-fleshed species such as flounder, sole, and thin cuts of cod as well as the dark-fleshed fish (e.g. salmon, mackerel, tuna) that will overpower the stew.

I used 2 cups of homemade shrimp stock. You can use a cup of clam juice plus a cup of chicken broth, or conventional fish stock. Fish heads are ideal if you can get them; my market was sold out.

2 dozen littleneck clams
2 dozen (or more) mussels
1 lb shrimp, shelled
1 lb bay scallops
1/2 cooked Dungeness crab, broken into leg segments
1 lb rockfish fillets, cut into 3-inch pieces
1-2 cups white wine (or red)
1 28 oz can whole plum tomatoes with liquid
2 cups fish stock (or clam juice, shrimp stock, etc.)
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tbsp tomato paste
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium onions (or 1 large), chopped
2 ribs celery, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 bay leaf
1-2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
fresh basil for garnish
good bread

In a heavy pot or Dutch oven saute the onions in olive oil over medium heat for a minute or two, then add the garlic, chopped vegetables, red pepper flakes, and bay leaf. Cook several minutes until veggies are soft, then stir in tomato paste. Cook another minute and pour in wine and let bubble for a couple minutes. Add tomatoes and stock, roughly chopping the whole tomatoes in the pot. Simmer for a least 30 minutes; longer is better. Add the crab legs and simmer another 15 minutes. When you’re ready to serve the stew, add the fin fish first and simmer for a few minutes, then add the shellfish. When the clams and mussels have all opened, stir in the parsley. It’s ready to eat. Serve piping hot with good crusty bread and some chopped basil for garnish.

As written above, this Cioppino will easily serve six, but for larger groups you can add another can of tomatoes, more wine and stock, extra seasoning, and leave the seafood amounts as is. Or, if serving a smaller group you might consider cutting the shrimp and scallops by half. All this seafood can be expensive when paying market prices, so tinker according to your budget and taste. It’s a very forgiving dish.

Spicy Black Bean Clams

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ONE OF THE MANY great things about Manila clams is that they’re often available high in the intertidal zone. And while they can be smaller in these spots, this is the size preferred by many Chinese restaurants.

The reason for the small clams is readily apparent if you make a black bean sauce. The minced garlic and ginger, along with the mashed bits of fermented black beans, balance perfectly with a sweet, tender clam that isn’t chewy in the least, and the shell holds just the right amount of sauce for…dignified slurping.

The black beans in a Chinese Black Bean Sauce are actually soybeans. The jarred variety are convenient but the dried fermented kind are more traditional. 

3 dozen littleneck clams, washed and scrubbed 
2 tbsp cooking oil
1 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp fresh ginger, chopped
2 tbsp garlic, chopped
2 scallions, thinly sliced and divided between green top and whitish bulb
1 red chili pepper, cut into thin strips
2 tbsp fermented black beans
1/4 cup chicken stock
2 tbsp Chinese cooking wine
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp aji-mirin (or 1 tsp sugar)
1/2 tsp chili paste

1. Combine in a bowl the stock, wine, soy, aji-mirin, and chili paste.

2. Heat wok or deep frying pan on high until near smoking, then add both oils. Stir-fry ginger, garlic, scallion bulb, and chili pepper for 30 seconds.

3. Add clams and continue stirring until they begin to open. Pour in stock, add black beans, stir and cover. When clams are all open, remove to serving bowls and ladle over juices. Garnish with remaining green onion.

Serves 1 for dinner or 2 as an appetizer. 

Warm My Cockles

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I’ll admit that among most clam chowder aficionados—of which I am most certainly one—Manhattan style is something of a red-haired step child. Given my druthers, I go for cream and butter too. But let’s not sell short that versatile fruit the tomato. It’s among the New World’s most successful exports, along with cocoa, potatoes, and corn. In any other chowder most of us love the tomato, but for some reason it’s maligned when in company with clams.

Well, get over it. While Manhattan Clam Chowder may often be dismissed as nothing more than vegetable soup with a few clams tossed in for good measure, if you cook it at home it can be so much more. And if you make it with cockles instead of clams…well, then you’re in truly rarified territory.

About Cockles

Cockles are medium-sized bivalves that inhabit sandy beaches and mudflats in the intertidal zone. Because their siphons are so short, they’re usually buried just beneath the surface. They can be distinguished from other bivalves by radiating ridges on the shell that run from hinge to margin.

I’ve had good cockling in Oregon. Puget Sound cockles (Clinocardium nuttalli), though widespread, aren’t commonly encountered, probably because of a lack of sandy habitat. When I saw a bunch of broken cockle shells littering a Hood Canal beach the other day I knew right away we were going to sacrifice a limit of steamer clams for these beautiful-looking mollusks. The easiest way to harvest them is with a garden rake. Look for tideflats with evidence of cockle shells, then rake the flats at low tide. It doesn’t take an abundance of elbow grease to uncover a cockle—you’ll know right away because the rake tines will ping off the shell.


Cockles have a muscular foot that can reportedly propel them up to two feet as they “jump” along the sea floor. Most folks don’t bother with cockles because they’re tough and also because they’re usually filled with grit from their sandy habitat. But they’re meaty, flavorful, and fun to forage. You can get rid of the grit by keeping the cockles in clean salt water for 24 hours before cooking, and the toughness is remedied by chopping and tenderizing. I use them mostly for chowder.

Spicy Manhattan Cockle Chowder

A few days before the new year my neighbor stopped by with a bagful of peppers from his garden. Seattle is not an easy place to grow peppers—and how these things were still in mint condition in the middle of winter was something of a mystery. But I’m fine with mysteries, especially if they work their way into a variety of deep winter cooking to add spice and intrigue. We dropped a few into the New Year’s Eve Paella and sprinkled a generous helping into another Crab and Seafood Gumbo. The last got tossed in the Manhattan Cockle Chowder.

This is the sort of dish you can cook as you process each ingredient, an hour from start to finish. The hot peppers spice it up and the sherry gives it a sweet finish.

20 medium-sized cockles in the shell (or 2 cups of meat)
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup water
2 tbsp olive oil
3 thick slices bacon, diced
1 large onion, sliced into half-moons
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 carrots, sliced into rounds
3 ribs celery, split and sliced
2 hot peppers, diced
3 large red potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 28 oz cans whole plum tomatoes, with juice
2 tbsp fresh thyme, chopped
2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
sherry
parsley for garnish

1. With live cockles in the shell, figure you’ll need about 20, or more if they’re small (about 2-3 pounds). Combine wine and water in a heavy pot and heat on high. Add cockles when boiling, cover, and steam for several minutes until all shells are open. Turn off heat, remove meat to a bowl, and strain liquid (yields about 2 cups).

2. In same pot, heat oil and saute bacon until beginning to crisp. In turn, stir in onions, garlic, carrots, celery, peppers, and potatoes, adding each ingredient successively as you finish chopping.

3. Add reserved cockle broth. Pour in both cans of tomatoes and, to save time and mess, rough-cut tomatoes in the pot with a spoon or knife. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer. Add herbs. Cook until vegetables begin to soften, then add chopped cockles. Cook several more minutes. Ladle into bowls, add sherry to taste, and garnish with chopped parsley. Serve with crusty bread.

Clams with Pancetta, Wine & Cream

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THIS A VARIATION on a classic dish that you see in restaurants all the time. Fresh thyme is an essential ingredient, and if you don’t have pancetta, good slab bacon is fine. 

2 dozen steamer clams, scrubbed
2-3 oz pancetta, or 2 thick slices of quality bacon, diced
1 large shallot, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp fresh thyme, chopped
1 tbsp parsley, chopped
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup cream
1 tbsp butter
thyme sprigs for garnish

Using a heavy pot, saute the pancetta in butter over medium heat until crisp on the edges. Stir in shallot, then garlic a minute later. Cook another minute or two until softened before de-glazing with wine. Stir in cream and herbs and raise heat to medium-high. Add clams and cover, cooking until they open, several minutes. Eat with good bread for sopping up the ambrosial liquid. Serves 2 as an appetizer.

Final Forage of ’08

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I took advantage of a gap in the weather yesterday to shanghai Riley and his best friend Alec to our go-to shellfish beach. The snow had mostly melted and high winds and rain were yet to arrive. Even crossing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge the two second-graders ignored the world outside, too wrapped up in trading their Pokemon cards to admire the dramatic view of Puget Sound’s glacial pinch. They haggled in the back seat like a couple of old geezers.

But once on the clam beds the twenty-first century’s kiddie distractions began to slip away: Pokemon characters and Nintendo gave way to the visceral pleasures of working a shovel into the sand and uncovering a nice littleneck clam. The boys found sand dollars, caught a sculpin, and engineered a network of canals and locks as the tide receded. They dug clams and found mussels. They got a laugh out of a thieving gull that pilfered my container of shucked oysters the moment I turned my back.

When we got home, Alec proudly presented his mom with a limit of clams. I’ve got plans for our own haul: full limits of clams, mussels, and oysters will be part of tonight’s feast, which will incorporate a few other wild delicacies from 2008. More on that next year.

Happy New Year everyone!

Nueva York Clam Dip

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A SINGLE chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, minced, is enough to turn up the heat on this otherwise standard clam dip. Chopped cilantro, lime juice, and a garnish of festive red pepper and green scallions add extra zing.

I can’t remember where this recipe came from. Chances are I got it from relatives down in Arkansas, who, despite being landlocked, know their football and their clam dips. Put this out at your Super Bowl party and I guarantee you’ll be throwing flags as you watch your guests lick the bowl before half-time.

18 littleneck clams or 6 razor clams
1 can of Rainier (Miller High Life is acceptable)
4 slices bacon, chopped
3 tbsp onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
8 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
3 tbsp sour cream (or Mexican crema)
3 tbsp cilantro, chopped
Juice of half a lime
1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, minced
1/2 red pepper, diced
scallions, sliced for garnish
hot sauce to taste

1. With littleneck clams, steam open in beer, reserving 2 tablespoons of broth; if using frozen razor clams, thaw out and similarly save 2 tablespoons of liquor. Chop clams.

2. Fry bacon in skillet, then remove to paper towel with slotted spoon when crispy. Saute onion and garlic in bacon fat for a minute or two, then spoon into serving bowl. If using razor clams, saute in remaining fat for 5 minutes and add to bowl.

3. Whisk together softened cream cheese and sour cream in same bowl with clams, reserved clam juice, onions, garlic, bacon, cilantro, lime juice, chipotle pepper, half of diced red pepper, and a few dashes of hot sauce. Garnish with remaining diced red pepper and sliced scallions.

Yields about 2 cups.

Oh Canada!

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I love Canada. At my old bookstore job I used to work regularly with Canadian publishers, who came down to Seattle each season to present their latest frontlist books. We’d go out to some nice restaurants on the publisher’s dime, and I can say unequivocally that those Canadians put me under the table each time. The next day they’d be chipper as ever at the day-long meeting while I felt like slapping a cold t-bone across my face. My Canadian friends mountain bike over teeter-totter logs suspended a dozen feet above the ground, surf the icy waters of Vancouver Island’s west coast, and ski like bandits on a getaway run.

I just wish I could get up there more often, if only to let some of that Canadian gnarliness rub off on me and my kids. Happily, in recent years a tradition has sprung up among four Seattle families who share a waterside cabin for the better part of a week each summer in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia. There’s an outhouse and a well with a hand-pump. A variety of mismatched camp stoves function as the kitchen. Everyone agrees that to update a single feature would be sacrilege. In the U.S. it’s getting harder to find such rustic accommodations; not so in Canada.

The real magic of this setup is watching our nine American kids do without their accustomed gewgaws and explore the natural environment. Games of tag and sardines go on among the old-growth Douglas-firs. Hide-and-seek in head-high salal bushes is a real challenge. They build “fairy houses” on the property and keep eyes peeled for the legendary Island Trolls. But it’s the water that’s most tempting.

This year the older kids showed a surprising interest in catching their own food. They dug clams for hours, used a dropnet to gather bait, fished for bottomfish, and set a crab trap. They even ate oyster po’ boys. In a “Lord of the Flies” moment that might freak out some parents, one little girl—a few days shy of starting kindergarten—caught a kelp greenling from shore, using a clam she had dug up for bait. All the other kids clamored ’round, each one administering a blow to the head to do it in. We grilled the greenling that night and they all ate of it with gusto under the stars. Rockfish and flounder landed on the menu as well, as did three species of clam: mahogany, littleneck, and horse. The adults had to hide batches of steamed clams just to have a few to eat.

Bottoms Up!

I don’t own a boat and rarely have access to one, so one of the real treats is taking an ancient battle-scarred Whaler out to the bottomfish grounds, where it’s virtually impossible to get skunked. Every kid caught a fish, bouncing weights along the bottom and using clams for bait. Sometimes you get more than you bargain for; one of the flounders came up half-eaten and it’s not uncommon to haul in the occasional dogfish. Sadly, as in much of the Northwest, the salmon runs have been badly depleted and we don’t even make the effort of time and gas to look for the remaining few.

The Myth of the “R” Month

Spend any time harvesting oysters and you’re bound to hear the old saw about “R” months, that you should avoid oysters in any month without the letter “R”: May, June, July, August—the summer season, effectively.

Bah!

Now it may be true that in earlier days without reliable refrigeration and fast transportation, the warm months were the most likely to see fish spoilage. Similarly, the warm months are when we usually get the algae blooms that can cause red tides, which were less closely monitored in the past. Neither of these issues should obtain now.

The only other factor is the oyster spawn. When the water is warm enough, oysters undergo a physiological change in preparation for spawning, with their organs largely given over to the task of reproduction, resulting in a milky, somewhat mushy meat (see above). It is during this stage that many oyster lovers spurn their cherished bivalve. But wait. The milky substance is not the result of any sort of toxin or sickness. Most of it can be washed away simply enough by running the oyster under tap water. While I don’t slurp down oysters raw at this time, I can think of no reason to not batter them in egg, flour, and cornmeal and fry them up for po’ boys. The half-pints didn’t seem to mind either.

Go Make Your Clam Bed

Probably more time was spent digging clams than any other activity. We used big shovels and small shovels, spades and scratchers. The kids dug trenches deep enough to hide in. Native littlenecks lay just a few inches beneath the surface, but butter clams (which we only used for bait) secreted themselves well below the littlnecks—and horse clams, also known as gapers, were deeper yet. Higher up the beach the kids discovered mahogany clams, a silky smooth clam with a lustrous brown shell that is delicious steamed and dipped in butter. The gapers got cut up for chowder.

Bait

Collecting bait is often more fun for kids than the actual hooking and catching of fish. Heck, I feel pretty much the same way about it sometimes—which is why filming these two kids going at it with the dropnet was such pure pleasure. It hurt my knees just to watch them squat down on their haunches so effortlessly for minutes at a time. I was reminded of more innocent summers in the distant past, of catching frogs and building bike jumps with my neighbor Sarah Sulger, the complications of adolescence and adulthood still years away. Watching this scene unfold, only a short bit captured here, might have been the highlight of my trip.

And then it was time to go home, to get back to work and prepare for the school year. While waiting for the first of two ferries to shuttle us back to the mainland, we found a monstrous patch of Himalayan blackberries and picked until the last car had debarked before running back to our vehicles for loading. I’ll post the result of that quick pick in a future post: blackberry crisp.

I hope everyone had a tremendous Labor Day Weekend!

Thai Red Curry Clams

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3 lbs littleneck clams
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
1 stick lemongrass, cut into several 3-inch segments and crushed
1 tbsp peanut oil
1 can (14 oz) coconut milk
1 tbsp red curry paste
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup basil, rough cut

Saute the garlic in oil for a couple minutes, then add lemongrass. Cook another minute or two before pouring in can of coconut milk. Stir in red curry paste, fish sauce, and sugar. Bring to boil. Add clams and cover. When clams have opened (after 4 minutes or so), remove from heat and stir in basil. Serve immediately with bread for dipping.

Counting Clams

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I haven’t stressed enough the educational opportunities afforded by foraging. For instance, the art of counting!

Can’t you see me explaining to the game warden why we’ve exceeded our limit: “She did the counting. It was her!”

Yesterday was a banner day. A minus tide, sixty-five degrees, and sunny. We dug limits of clams and oysters, and got a pile o’ mussels too. Once everyone had left with their gunnysacks full, the kids stripped off their mud-caked clothes and went skinny-dipping. Good times.