Text 11216, 56 rader
Skriven 2008-07-28 10:00:44 av DAVE SACERDOTE (1:123/140)
Ärende: Steamers
================
New England soft-shelled clams - Steamers - are one of my all-time 
favorite foods. They're easy to prepare, they're delicious, and 
they're perfect as either an appetizer or as a light meal all by 
themselves.

Steamers are sandier than their hard-shelled cousins, so there's a 
bit more preparation involved. I dump them into a big colandar and 
then gently scrub them all around - including the edges - with a 
stiff vegetable brush. Discard clams with broken shells, or those 
that don't close up tightly when you grab and scrub them, or any that 
stink. (Clams smell fresh and briny, like the salt spray from a cold 
wave breaking on the rocks of a North Atlantic shore. If you get any 
that smell like low tide at the salt flats, chuck it.) As I scrub 
each one, it gets placed in a large Dutch oven and set aside. When 
all of the clams are scrubbed, I add a bit of fresh cool water to 
the pan - not too much, and no salt, they'll have plenty of their 
own - cover, and put the pan over medium heat to let the little 
bivalved morsels steam. When the clams have yawned open in their 
sauna, they're ready to eat. I serve them with melted butter and a 
mug of the clam broth from the pan. Swish the clams in the broth 
before dipping them in butter and any remaining grit you couldn't 
scrub away earlier is left behind.


Somehow, word spread around that steamers were "better" if they 
were allowed to set a while before cooking, sprinkled with cornmeal.
Supposedly, the clams would eat the cornmeal and purge out whatever 
clam food they'd been eating, and this would make them "sweeter." I've 
tried that, and there are a couple problems with it.

The clams don't really eat much cornmeal in the time before scrubbing 
and cooking, if they eat any at all. Checking out the bellies of 
sprinkled and unsprinkled clams shows hardly any cornmeal in their 
stomachs - certainly not enough to replace all the other stuff in there.

It adds an extra step to the preparation/cooking process. The clams 
can't be steamed with the cornmeal still in the pan with them - 
cornmeal expands and gets thick when it's cooked, so the pan has to 
be dumped and the clams and pan rinsed out and the water replaced.


And finally, soaking in fresh water doesn't do the clams any good. 
Their "feet" - that funny-looking tube thingy that sticks out of 
their shell - gets swollen up and sick-looking from prolonged exposure 
to fresh water. You're better off just scrubbing the clams and 
steaming them, without any intermediate tricks.


---
http://davescupboard.blogspot.com/ - Dave's Cupboard - Food and 
Restaurant Reviews; If I post it here in NCE, you'll find it 
blogged with photos at Dave's Cupboard.

http://bacon-labels.blogspot.com/ - A gallery of bacon package labels.
(The extra shelf in Dave's Cupboard.
 * Origin: Doc's Place BBS Fido Since 1991 docsplace.tzo.com (1:123/140)