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Stewed Clams, Parisienne
Finely chop three well-washed leeks, place in saucepan with a tablespoon butter and lightly brown for ten minutes, occasionally stirring meanwhile, pour in a quart and a half white broth, season with half teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Cut four well-washed, peeled raw potatoes in quarter-inch squares, add to broth, and let gently boil for twenty minutes. Carefully open thirty-six little neck clams, add to soup with their liquor, one pint water, and let boil for ten minutes, being careful to skim once in a while. Pour in two gills hot milk, one ounce butter and a saltspoon cayenne, mix well, pour stew into a soup tureen and serve.
A clam and leek soup in the French manner — essentially a leek-and-potato soup finished with clams and milk. Two conversions and one timing change are all it needs.
- The hinge: clam timingTen minutes of boiling turns littlenecks into erasers. Add the shucked clams and their strained liquor at the very end, off a hard boil, and give them two to three minutes until the edges just firm; build the soup base first and let it simmer the full twenty-plus minutes on its own.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of hot milk is one cup. A saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon — a real quantity of cayenne in a soup this size, so add half and taste.
- White brothBouillon blanc — an unbrowned veal or chicken stock. A light, unsalted chicken stock is the practical substitute; avoid dark or heavily reduced commercial broth, which will darken a soup the recipe clearly intends to keep pale.
- Hold back the saltThe half teaspoon goes in before the clams do, and clam liquor is brine. Safer to season at the end, after the liquor and milk have gone in.
- Browning the leeks"Lightly brown for ten minutes" means sweat them soft over moderate heat with only a suggestion of color. Leeks scorch quickly and burnt leek carries through the whole tureen.
- Clams and gritThirty-six littlenecks yield roughly a cup and a half of liquor. Open them over a bowl and pour the liquor through a fine strainer or cloth — the last spoonful always holds sand. Discard any clam that will not close when tapped before shucking.
- The milkWarm the milk before it goes in and keep the finished stew below a simmer. Boiling after the milk is added risks curdling, particularly with the clam liquor's acidity and salt in the pot.
- YieldAbout two and a half quarts of finished stew — six generous first-course servings, four as a main with bread.
"Parisienne" here is shorthand for the French treatment of a familiar American ingredient: instead of the salt pork, onion and cracker of a New England chowder, or the tomato of the Manhattan style, the clams are set in a leek-and-potato base — the same foundation as potage parmentier — and finished with milk and butter rather than cream. Littleneck clams take their name from Little Neck Bay on Long Island, and were cheap and abundant in East Coast markets, which is why they turn up in hotel-kitchen soups dressed in French vocabulary.