Scup

I need a couple of decent recipes for clams. Used to be a commercial clam digger, and I still can get 1/2 bushel just about any time I want, however, my stuffed clams suck badly. I have tried dozens of recipes that I have found on the web but none of them appealed to my taste. The frozen stuff clams that you can purchase at Stop and Shop taste pretty good to me. I have no idea what I am doing wrong but I suspect most of the recipes are way too complex for my simple tastes. The other recipe I need is for clam chowder. I sort of like my chowder but all I do is buy a can of Snow's clam chowder and add a bunch of fresh clams to it. Always thought Snows was pretty good but lack the amount of clams I prefer. However, a few months ago, the monastery at Enders Island was serving fish dinners on Fridays. The course included clam chowder and it was the best I have ever tasted. If anyone knows what I am talking about, I would like to prepare something that would just come close to what they serve.

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"Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go" by William Feather

MailleMarine

Wish I cooked by recipe, I could help you out with the stuffies.

If you like white clam sauce...

Get some saffron and put it in about a cup of white wine.
Start the pasta.
Clean the clams, 20-30 littlenecks leave them whole.
Start some crushed garlic, an onion, and some crushed red peper in a good dose of good olive oil. Add the clams and wine and cover to steam them open in batches if needed. Right as they open remove to a bowl.
Chop the clams up a bit if you want. Add them and thier broth back to the pan. Get it hot and add in about a half stick of butter, Add the almost done pasta in with some of the cooking water, A bunch of chopped parsley and black pepper to finish.

some good chit.

I'll try to remember the stuffies.

MailleMarine

Now i'm getting hungry...

Basics for my stuffed clams. Might be too much going on here for your taste though.

Food processor – red pepper, green pepper, celery, green onion, regular onion (not too much), crushed red pepper

Squeeze this out but save the juice if you need it later.

Food process clams just a bit, I like big chunks. Mix the meat of the clams (don’t use a lot of the juice here) with the veggies, Add pepper, paprika, garlic salt, whatever ground spicy pepper you like, fresh chopped parsley, onion powder, lemon and or lime juice.

Work in good seasoned bread crumbs (make them yourself they taste much better) then add in a good amount of olive oil.

If it’s really dry add some clam juice and or veggie juice. You can cook one up to give it a taste and see if you need to adjust anything.

Make a ton and freeze them.

Scup

My wife makes a white clam sauce exactly as you described and it is great meal. I will eat a bowl of it so large that it could probably feed five normal people. Then I have to go to the gym afterwards and work out for two hours to burn it off. The only other two other dishes I like better are: fried New England bay scallops, and pasta topped with tomato sauce cooked with Italian sausage for flavor, and about six ounces of fresh picked blue claw meat placed on top of the sauce. They say you are not suppose to grate cheese on pasta fish dishes, but likely those that say it have never tried Reggiano Parmigiano cheese imported from Italy.
There is nothing that you put into your stuffed clams that I do not like. It really sounds good. I will give it a try very soon. I like the idea of being able to freeze some of it as well, as it then becomes a tasty quick prepared meal. Probably an awful lot of fishermen neglect the abundant amount of clams we have here in Connecticut that are available just the small one time yearly fee. I do not even have to pay that because the town of Stonington allows senior citizens to have a clamming permit for free. With the reduced finfish creel limits, I will likely have plenty of time left after fishing to tong up a bunch of clams before heading in. Thanks for stuffed clams info, will let you know how I make out.

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"Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go" by William Feather

tom

Open 15 or 20 hard shells over a bowl saving the meat and the juice put it to the side. Take the shells break them in half and run them under water to clean them up pieces of shell sand what ever. place the half shells on a baking pan if you only make 12 you will want more so make 20! put them aside. Next Finely chop onion,sweet red and sweet green pepper,fresh garlic,and celery Throw that mix into fry pan with slab of butter saute not long just till it starts smell good "makes you hungry" Set that aside Now this is important Take a bowl use Peppridge farms stuffing mix NO Subs here!!!!!!now maybe half a bag maybe a little less into the bowl take a potato masher and bust up the cubes to half there size then add 2 eggs and the onion,peppergarlic mix. melt half a stick butter pour it in! Now take the clam meat and cut 10 of the clams in half and put 1 half clam in each of the half shells that you have on your baking sheet Hit each one with a squirt of lemon. Get some bacon frying on the stove you will need it later Take the rest of the clam meat and chop it up and throw it into the stuffing mix Now no SUBS again Fresh crab Lump or claw is ok mix the stuffing mix up with your hands give it a squirt of lemon and then add the crab then mix it one last time be carfull not to break the crab up into small pieces you want some good size chunks of meat if the mixture is not moist add a little clam juice your going to bake these babys on 425 for 20 to30 min so they need to be moist when you start Now stuff the the half shells with the mix on top of the half clam you put in them earlyer Stuffies mean stuffed so stuff them! Now take the fryed bacon not burnt i hope and break it up and sprinkle over the top of the clams Again hit each one of them with the lemon. Sprinkle them with parm cheese if you like and bake for 20 to 30 min at 425 or you hear them sizzleing loudly when you open the oven door I'm telling you Guys out there these are the best stuffies on the planet! Use only fresh and you will not be dissapointed Enjoy Mr. Vermont

Scup

Mr. Vermont,

Everything in your recipe sounds great. The clams are obtainable where I am right now. I will probability go with Maille's recipe just a soon as I get my rowboat in (probably this week), but will have to wait a bit before the Blue Claw crabs show up. It is not always easy to predict what the Blue Claw Crabs will be doing from season to season. Thanks for going into such detail as I tend to be klutz when it comes preparing food dishes. Your foolproof directions should make it impossible for me to go wrong. I tend to catch quite a large number of clams each season. I used to be commercial, but there was just too much paperwork and legal hoops to jump through so eventually I said the hell with it and just catch for myself and friends. I used to spend more time cleaning the clams than catching them. Now I dump 1/2 bushel of clams into a small plastic imported Chinese Cement Mixer used only for that purpose and use it in the same way a rock hound uses a rock tumbler. The clams come out as white as any you would ever wish to see. The tumbling action not only cleans the clams, but forces them to close up tighter than a drum, hence no sand gets in them either. The only negative thing is you have to cool them down and wait a bit before trying to open them after shaking the hell out of them. Now I have two good recipes, and will soon have the ingredients to implement both. Thanks again guys!

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"Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go" by William Feather

Scup

MailleMarine,

I got myself a half bushel of clams so I gave your stuffed clams a go. Made enough to stuff about two dozen shells, I wanted extra to freeze if they turned out OK. Bad mistake! My wife did the actual honors, but I helped out with the chopping. There was nothing in your recipe that I did not like but we must have butchered the hell out of it somehow. She cooked up three for starters. I ate one and it really tasted awful. Tried the second one, and it tasted exactly like the first, no surprise here. Still I was going to woof down the batch until my wife tried the third one and she dumped the lot of them out. Even my cat would not touch them. Do not know what went wrong. Perhaps, since there was no precise amounts given, I might have put too much of something in it. The stuffing sort of had a chopped liver consistency and I think if I had used chopped chicken livers instead of clams it might have been pretty good. All was not lost, as she made up a batch white clam sauce over spaghetti, and as always, it was terrific. I think I am going to try Tom's recipe just as soon as the blue claw crabs show up. This time, I am going to record everything I do, and only make enough for a couple of stuffed clams. If it works out, then I will upscale it and go for broke. Tonight, we are going to have clam fritters. We use a prepared clam fritter mix (Drumrock Clam Fritter and Clam Cake mix) and they always turn out dam good. What does not work out with fritters is if you make a large batch of them, they do not keep well the second time around. They become very rubbery if you cook them up, refrigerate them, and then try to reheat them. I am going to try to freeze a few of them before I cook them up, and then see if they will fry up OK after I defrost them. Sea Well Seafood (a Mom and Pop seafood store in my area) sells stuffed clams. Not sure if she makes them herself, or buys them. However, I think I am going to give them a try as well since if they even come close to her conch salad they should be a real treat. Last week I tried her smoked tuna and smoked trout and was surprised at how nice they tasted.

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"Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go" by William Feather

MailleMarine

Wow, major bummer! Maybe next time I make them I'll try and write down what I use and the amounts. But then again that's not how I cook! Maybe I'll freeze some and overnight them to you on dry ice just to redeem myself.

Chopped liver consistency doesn't sound too good.

Scup

Do not worry about it, but I appreciate the thought. It is always a high risk thing when one gives out a recipe. My tastes can differ widely from yours, I could screw things up (which I probably did), and seemingly minor differences such as using prepared season bread crumbs just might be critical. Several years ago, a co-worker bragged that he makes the greatest stuffed clams anyone has ever tasted. Getting on in years, he could not harvest clams to any great degree so we formed a pack. I would get the clams, he would prepare them. After I received the first batch from him as he exclaimed these were the best he had ever made, I knew I was in trouble. They tasted like crap! Sometimes I wonder if I am the only sane person on this planet and everyone else is nuts! Of course sometimes it goes the other way too. I used to work for the Navy so Norfolk was almost my second home. I kept on seeing those Smithfield hams being sold all over the place and my Southern friends told me they were greatest hams ever. The New Year was about to break so I purchased the biggest Smithfield ham I could find and drove home with it. When I opened the ham up, I was pissed. The dam thing was moldy and even the bone was rotted. Came close to throwing it out, but being a cheapskate, I decided to give it a try. I found that after cooking it up, there were some decent looking cuts that could be had but they tasted awful. Finally, I decided to take it along to a New Year's party I had been invited to as maybe someone there might like it. After giving the ham to the host it was placed on a table. Within minutes, the ham became the center attraction of the party. Everyone love it, and it was quickly devoured. Still confused as to what happened, the next time I saw my Southern friends I asked them for an explanation. They explained one has to acquire a taste for a Smithfield ham. I should have started out with a sugar cured ham, then moved on to a country ham, followed by a Beale ham, then a mild pepper cured ham, and finally I would be ready for Smithfield ham. When I explained the dam ham was rotted, they laughed. Apparently, I was not the first Yankee to think that. During the civil war, many a southerner made it through the war because of these pepper cured hams. When the Union army ravage the countryside to sustain themselves, and they found a pepper cured ham hidden under the kitchen sink, they thought it was a rancid piece meat and left it.

__________________
"Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go" by William Feather