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Rhode Island Clam Chowder
3 CUPS SOFT-SHELL CLAMS 3 CUPS WATER 3 OUNCES SALT PORK I SLICED ONION 3 MEDIUM-SIZED POTATOES, CUBED 21/2 TABLESPOONS BUTTER I 13/4 CUPS LIGHT CREAM, SCALDED SCANT TABLESPOON SALT 1/8 TEASPOON PEPPER Put clams in cold water and bring to boiling point. Drain, reserving clam stock. Cut off firm parts of clam and chop fine, combine with soft parts. Try out salt pork, add onion, and sauté slowly until tender, covering pot to retain moisture and prevent onions from browning. Combine clam stock, potato and onion mixture, and cook 10-15 minutes or until potatoes are done. Add butter and cream, stirring constantly, then combine all ingredients, and when piping hot, but not boiling, serve with pilot crackers.
Originally this was made with round, hard-shell quahogs, but these are tough and indigestible compared to the softshell or "steamer" clams which are preferred today. Also, formerly, pilot crackers were often crumbled into the chowder to thicken it, but one feature of Rhode Island's chowder is that it is thinner than that of Boston and other New England places, where the clams are often put in whole, without chopping. No flour or cracker thickening is used, and likewise no tomatoes, no spice, and sometimes no onion.
But even within the small confines of Rhode Island there are several schools of chowder makers, some even using cider in place of milk or cream, but all of them depending on juicy Narragansett clams which inspired this verse in Yankee Doodle: "Let gouty monarchs share their shame 'Neath silken-wove pavilions:
But give us Narragansett clams- The banquet for the millions."
A deliberately thin, cream-based chowder with no flour, no crackers stirred in and no tomato. Most of the work is in handling the clams gently and keeping the finished pot below a simmer.
- Never let it boilOnce the cream goes in, hold the chowder just below a simmer. Boiling curdles light cream and turns the clams rubbery, and the recipe's insistence on "piping hot, but not boiling" is the whole technique.
- Clams by volumeThree cups of shucked soft-shell clam meats is roughly 1 1/2 lb shucked, or about 4 lb in the shell. If you buy them live, purge them in cold salted water for an hour so they release grit, since steamers hold sand in the siphon.
- The opening stepBringing the clams up to the boiling point extracts their liquor; do not let them cook on, and strain the reserved stock through cloth to catch sand.
- "Try out salt pork"Dice the 3 oz of salt pork small and render it slowly over low heat until the fat runs and the bits are golden. Cook the onion in that fat, covered, without color.
- Salt with restraintA scant tablespoon is a great deal of salt. Between the clam stock and the salt pork the pot may be seasoned already; add it at the end, by taste.
- Scalded creamScalding means heating to about 180F, just until a rim of bubbles forms at the edge. Warming the cream before it meets the hot stock reduces the chance of it breaking.
- Pilot crackersPilot or common crackers are thick, dry, hard crackers in the ship's-biscuit line, still available in New England in some form. Water crackers or plain oyster crackers stand in; serve them alongside rather than stirring them in, which is the point the recipe makes about Rhode Island style.
- YieldRoughly 2 to 2 1/2 quarts; four to six bowls.