Clamming up at the thought of a mollusk
How one evil chowder put a fork in a favourite childhood tradition
Bless him. Seafood sage John Bil, coowner of the fish shop and restaurant Honest Weight, had done his best, opening a clam, explaining why it looked fresh, and carefully steaming some for me.
But there I sat, fork in hand, the bowl of 14 clams revealing their plump chunks of meat in front of me. Steamed with butter and diced bacon, they smelled lovely, but they still looked slimy. My stomach tightened.
You’d never guess clams were a beloved summer food of my childhood and 20s. We’d dig them ourselves at the beach. But after a traumatic encounter with an evil clam chowder more than 30 years ago, I swore off those mollusks for the rest of my life.
I’d allowed one very bad experience to overshadow all the good ones. When I was growing up in Connecticut, on Long Island Sound, my father would wait for low tide and take me to a rocky stretch of shore, away from the swimming beach, apart from the marina.
We’d wade out into the muck where he’d drag his clam rake: an oddlooking contraption, a pole with a basket at the end that had long sharp protruding teeth.
I don’t remember if he ever let me use the rake, but I do recall wearing swimming shoes and burrowing my toes into the mud in search of clams. Any complaints from me, “Daaaad, I’m cold,” “Are we done yet?” have been conveniently erased from my mind, and the memory is securely stored under, “Dad and me: great times together.”
At home, he’d steam the clams or bake the chopped-up clam meat, mixed with bread crumbs and who knows what else, and serve them on the half shell. My mother would be delighted, and eating our clams together always felt like a special occasion.
Fast forward to my 20s. My university friend, Pat, had a family waterfront house out on the east end of Long Island, on the north fork, away from the snooty south shore Hamptons. It’s where our scattered friends would gather. Depending on the tides, there was a rhythm to a summer’s day at Pat’s, swimming, lolling in the sun and clamming. We’d take rakes, as I had done with my father, and troll the muddy bottoms of the bay near her house. We’d also grab for oysters.
Pat’s father would shuck the clams and oysters, rinse them and place them on a tray. We would sit on the back porch, drinking gin-and-tonics with lime and fresh mint and rave about the raw oysters and clams, dressed with maybe a squirt of lemon or a dip of homemade cocktail sauce. And that’s how we’d watch the sky go pink and the sun set. It was the good life, and we knew it.
It may have been the summer of 1982 when my clam-buddy Pat and I were in Montauk, the farthest eastern tip of Long Island. We both had clam chowder (New England-style) for lunch and later boarded our respective trains home, she to the middle of Long Island, me all the way back to Brooklyn. That’s about 183 km.
My stomach rumblings started after an hour on the train. I just thought, this will pass. It got worse. I was doubled up. By the time I got off the train and stood on the stifling, noisy subway platform trying to get to my Brooklyn neighbourhood, I was panic-stricken. How long would it take to find a bathroom in this dank underground? Do they even have one?
A subway car roared in, and I chanced it, praying my innards would hold. I eventually reached my apartment without humiliating myself, but that was pure luck. I was sick for 24 hours and then only able to nibble on crackers and rice for several days. Pat had also fallen ill.
Since then, my stomach clenched at the mere thought of clams. That’s 33 years of clenching.
This winter, however, I ate a delicious fish gumbo at a friend’s home not knowing it contained clams. My unsuspecting stomach hadn’t revolted. Perhaps the statute of limitations on food revulsion had run out.
So here I am at Honest Weight on Dundas St. W., Bil shows me three types of clams: brown-and-white shelled savouries from British Columbia, green-and-blue-hulled New Zealand cockles and pale grey quahogs from Prince Edward Island. The quahogs, native to the North American east coast, are likely the type I used to dig and eat.
Opening a clam, he explains that the meat should look full, the juice clear. It should smell fresh, not heavy. In the U.S., he says, quahogs are often eaten raw, but Canadians tend to cook them. That’s fine by me.
He’s prepared all three types in a bowl. I ask more questions, clearly stalling. “I’d start with that one,” Bil says kindly, pointing to the smallest quahog. “I have a good feeling about that one.”
I pop it in my mouth and taste the salty ocean. It’s delicious.
“The P.E.I version is so sweet — it’s better than what you had as a kid,” says Bil. I gobble down a few more. I’ve conquered clam-phobia.
Bil’s recipe is simple: he simmers diced double-smoked bacon in a frying pan with butter for about 10 minutes, then adds minced shallots and a splash of fish stock (or water) and lets it cook for about two minutes. He tosses in the un-shucked clams and covers the pan.
The smaller clams pop open in about three minutes and the slightly larger quahogs in about five minutes. The clams are eaten straight out of the shell.
All I would add is a gin-and-tonic and a sunset. In this weekly series, Star writers reminisce about a food that reminds them of summer; nwhite@thestar.ca.