Shellfish
Clambakes "R" in Season CLAMBAKES ARE ALWAYS in season, because, unlike oysters, there's no superstition afloat that clams should be eaten only in months that contain the letter "r." So you can throw a clambake whenever your little tummy desires, and how and wherever you like it, for the old-fashioned clambake is still enjoyed in several styles. 1. The simplest seashore method calls for laying down a bed of small stones, or a thick layer of pebbles, on which you build your fire and keep it booming until the stones are red hot. Then rake away the ashes, lay down a blanket of seaweed (if you can't gather your own you can buy it from fish dealers along the coast). Put your clams, either hard or soft, or both, on top, and cover them with a blanket of seaweed. Over all stretch heavy canvas to keep the steam in while the cooking stones do their slow but juicy work. This takes 2-3 hours. Split chickens, lobsters, corn, potatoes and such are often cooked with the clams; and nobody has yet found out whether it's the elemental thrill of eating out in the open or the flavor given by the seaweed that makes any kind of clambake so popular. 2. Oven style: make an oven of rocks with flat rocks on top. Build your fire so the flat rocks will be thoroughly heated and act like the top of a stove. Lay seaweed on them, then clams and anything else your little heart desires, cover with seaweed and keep fire burning while clams are cooking. This takes only an hour or an hour and a half. 3. To get up a bang-up clambake with all the trimmings, on the order of a Nantucket Squantum shore picnic, or a Newport Clambake Club bust, first count noses and allow 20 clams, either hard quahogs or soft steamers, to each little red lane that pops open right beneath. Also provide three squares of cheesecloth for each eater and take along a wash boiler to do the job in ultra-modern streamlined fashion. Pick a pretty spot on the seashore, in the woods, or right in your own back yard. Wash clams, tie them up separately, about 20 in each square of cheesecloth, for some like 'em hard and some like 'em soft. Have a good fire going under the old wash boiler, toss the bags of clams in the bottom with a couple cups of water to keep them from scorching till the sap begins to flow from the shells. Cover clam bags with plenty of cleaned fish, any kind that are running, such as dabs, blues, blacks or sea bass, tied separately in a second cheesecloth, about 1/2 pound of fish to each. On top lay split broilers, likewise tied in squares of cloth. Cover with well-washed potatoes in their jackets, either Irish or sweet, and if corn is in season top off with a layer of ears with their inside husks on. Cover everything with seaweed and tamp it down, putting one big spud on top of the seaweed to serve as a thermometer-when it's done, so's your whole clambake. Put wash boiler cover on tight so no steam can escape and everything will be ready in 40-50 minutes.
Then call the gang and deal out the little cooked bundles like Santa Claus, three bags apiece, plus the spuds and corn.
We owe this feast to the Indians and its never yet been house-broken, although you could pull off a miniature clambake in cabin or home fireplace when it's too cold outside. Clambake enthusiasts, of course, prefer following the whole thing through, in person, from digging the quahogs, cherrystones or steamers, to steaming them and eating them by the peck.
Three methods are given here, from a full pit bake on the beach to a wash-boiler version that works on any outdoor burner. The hinge in all three is steam: seaweed against hot rock or hot water, then a lid or canvas clamped down tight so nothing escapes.
- Buy your clams, don't dig themRecreational shellfishing is now regulated everywhere on the American coast, with licences, size limits and seasonal closures for biotoxins and bacteria. Check the state shellfish hotline before harvesting anything, or buy tagged clams from a dealer.
- A wash boiler is about 20 quartsA wash boiler is a large vessel -- capacities varied, commonly several gallons -- so any tall stockpot of 16 quarts or more with a tight lid will do the same work. For 6 to 8 people you want the pot at least three-quarters full once everything is layered in.
- Quantities per personTwenty clams and half a pound of fish a head, as written, plus a share of broiler, potatoes and corn, is a very large shore dinner. Ten to twelve clams is closer to a modern appetite.
- The seaweed to useRockweed, the olive-brown weed with the popping air bladders, is the traditional choice because those bladders hold seawater and release it as steam. Kelp and eelgrass work less well. Rinse off sand and any dead matter before it goes near food.
- Sort and cull firstDiscard any clam with a cracked shell or one that gapes and will not close when tapped. After cooking, discard any that stayed shut. Hard and soft clams cook at different rates; the recipe bags them separately, though it gives eaters' preference as the reason.
- Chicken needs a thermometer, not a potatoThe potato on top of the seaweed tells you the steam has penetrated, but split broilers must reach 165F at the thigh joint. Check the chicken bundles directly; if they lag, pull the clams and corn and give the birds another ten minutes.
- TimingsForty to fifty minutes in the boiler is right for a full load. Clams themselves open in five to eight minutes of live steam, so in the pit methods they are done long before the two to three hours are up. The long pit time is heating the mass, not the shellfish.
- Pit safetyWet seaweed on red-hot stone produces a violent burst of scalding steam. Stand upwind, use a long rake, and never use river stones or any rock that has sat in water, as trapped moisture can make them split.
- Old words"Little red lane" is period slang for the throat, so the count is per eater. "Dabs" are flounder and "blues" bluefish; "blacks" is probably blackfish (tautog), since the recipe lists sea bass separately. Any firm whole fish or thick fillet substitutes.