Clam

This bright, sassy soup is full of big flavors—garlic, peppers, and lemon—that team up to accent the briny clams. The dish is then tamed, just a bit, with velvety Controne beans, one of my favorite Italian beans. Goat Horn peppers are red, slim peppers that you can find in Spanish and Italian markets, or in some upscale grocery stores. The preparation of this soup is fairly straightforward, and once you start cooking, the dish moves quickly. Have all of your ingredients prepared and ready before you begin.

If you love fried clams or a nice bowl of clam chowder, then eating clams on the half shell will be a revelation for you. Serving clams as a crudo plays up their assertive, concentrated clam flavor and guarantees tender meat. It’s easy, delicious, and a little bit different. If you don’t have baby fennel, you can use finely chopped fennel bulb. For a less spicy dish, you can split the chile lengthwise and remove the seeds and membrane first, then dice.

This would make a lovely brunch dish, but you could serve it as an appetizer, too, with some toasted or grilled bread and a glass of sparkling. The quenelle of crème fraîche is made using two spoons like paddles to shape softer ingredients into an oval or a football. For a throwback to dot.com excess, pile some caviar on top if you like. If you aren’t feeling fancy, just dollop the crème fraîche on top instead.

In this fabulous crudo, baby fennel and radish offset the sweetness of the geoduck. This dish has an especially lovely texture to it, with the silken geoduck intermingling with the shaved vegetables. Serve with crusty bread to soak up all the goodness.

This dish channels the best of the clam shacks that dot the East Coast. Here, a crunchy cornmeal coating and a quick dip in hot oil render these soft-shell clams succulent and juicy. As an accompaniment, chopped sorrel gives aioli a lemony lift and gorgeous color for a nice twist on tartar sauce. For fun, serve them to your guests the way we do in the restaurants—in little paper cones. They’re not hard to fold, make for great oil-absorbing containers, and make you feel like you’re on the boardwalk.

I have had this chowder on the menu since day one, and no one—neither the patrons nor the staff—will let me take it off. Roasted sweet potato puree thickens the clam broth and imbues it with intense sweet flavor and a vibrant orange hue. That sweetness plays perfectly against the astringent wine and briny clam juice in the broth; a “touch” of rich cream added at the end brings everything lusciously together. Of course, there are also lots of fresh clams, smoky bacon, and (sweet) potato cubes in this hearty soup. Fresh tarragon delivers a touch of delicate anise flavor and a spot of green in the otherwise sunset-orange soup.

Chatham is a small town at the “elbow” of Massachusetts’ Cape Cod. As it is surrounded by water on three sides, fishing has historically been the major industry of the town. The sweet, mild-flavored cod caught off Chatham’s shores is the finest there is. Now, it might seem heretical for a Yankees fan such as I am to give a New England specialty equal billing with a Manhattan clam chowder, but even the Red Sox and the Yankees play on the same team for the All-Star game, right? This all-star dish surrounds creamy roasted potatoes and flaky cod with a tomato-accented broth-based clam chowder. Be sure to use Atlantic razor clams for the garnish. Pacific razor clams are larger and must be cleaned thoroughly and are cooked in a different manner, whereas the smaller Atlantic clam is ready to go!

This can be done with mussels and clams mixed, and you can also add shrimp at the end if you like variety.

This dish brings back memories of my childhood. I grew up only ten miles from the coast, and spent many Sunday mornings with my friends on the beach digging for clams, which we’d bring home to cook. I love the dense, chewy texture of razor clams, but if they’re not available, other clams work great with this recipe, too, including Manila, Asari, and littleneck.

The earliest American recipes for chowder called for fish rather than clams or shellfish and were prepared by layering the fish, salt pork, and biscuits (all shipboard staples) in a pot and cooking them for hours over a fire. This recipe calls for canned clams simply because those are the most easily accessible, but you can cook and use fresh clams as well.

Not quite a soup, New England fish chowder is known for its succulent large chunks of seafood and vegetables coated in a thin, milky broth. Traditionally this is made with cod; however, tilapia, flounder, or any other white fish will work fine. You can even use fillets directly from the freezer without defrosting them first. The fish will break into pieces as it cooks, or you can break it up while serving. Add any type of fresh or frozen seafood, such as crab or shrimp, or eight ounces of corn kernels for an even heartier meal. The type of milk used will affect how thick the broth is. Choose skim, 2 percent, whole, soy, rice, almond, or even heavy cream to suit your preference. To quickly remove the stems of chard (and other leafy greens like kale), hold the sides of the leaves together in one hand and use the other to rip the stem from the bottom of the leaf. Chard stems can be bitter. By chopping the stems finely and placing them on the bottom of the pot, they will have the opportunity to brown slightly and lose most of their bitterness.

This mock bouillabaisse is so scrumptious that you would never know it had anything “left over” in it. You do have to stop and pick up a dozen or so fresh mussels and a few clams the day you’re making it, but otherwise everything else is at hand, and you can put this together in half an hour. I am assuming, of course, that you have a good fish stock in your freezer; if not, plan to make this after you’ve had a lobster or a supper of steamed mussels and have some of that intense lobster or mussel broth left. Otherwise use clam juice, diluted by Half with water because it is quite strong.

Every summer my family vacations in Harvey Cedars on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. Say what you want about New Jersey but let me tell you, when it comes to produce and seafood, it’s hard to beat. Most people you talk to know all about the tomatoes and corn, but there is so much more. How about the clams? My family gets ours from a local clammer. The scallop boats come in daily. The swordfish is exceptional and the crabs are as good as they are anywhere. I’m inspired by all of these things, and I’ve included most of them in this one dish. It may seem like a lot of ingredients, and it is. If you want to leave something out go ahead, or add something to it by all means. All the action happens in one pot, making this a great beach house dish.

Clams steamed in beer is a favorite pub dish, and for good reason. The aroma of the hops in beer perfumes the shellfish and the malty flavor adds an extra roundness to the broth. Your kitchen will smell amazing! The sweetness of the clams, the licorice essence of fennel, the salty-smoky depth of bacon, and the slight bitterness of the stout make this a complex and flavor-packed dish.

Monkfish is perfect for this recipe because it doesn’t fall apart. It has a wonderfully tender and succulent texture similar to lobster, but monkfish is less expensive. This dish is also good with other types of fish and other kinds of seafood, such as scallops, shrimp, or lobster.