Chowder Chow Down in Fort Greene, BK

Last night I had the pleasure of learning how to make homemade clam chowder from Tara Broughel. Tara is a twenty-something graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a former school teacher, and current graduate student at Seton Hall University where she studies international relations and politics. Tara is not a big cook. In fact, she's pretty...um...how do I put this? Let's just say that she is pretty ignorant about cookery. Except, of course, when it comes to clam chowder.

Tara is a New Englander through and through. She grew up in the Boston area and her mother's family has been on the east coast of the United States since the first few ships arrived with settlers from the queen's country. It is only fitting that the one dish that Tara has perfected is this New England staple.

Tara has spent many summers in Connecticut and one of her family's traditions is clamming. Various family members go out into the brackish waters of the Long Island Sound - pants legs rolled up, and toes sinking into the muck - to search for clams. Once the clams are collected, some are eaten on the half shell and some, the lucky ones, are reserved for this delicious chowder, which was created by Tara's uncle, Eric Krause.

When I arrived at Tara's apartment she had most of the ingredients waiting on her counter. I had purchased the clams and as soon as I removed them from my tote and handed them to Tara, she frowned and said, "They're too cold. We'll have to run them under hot water."

After inspecting the clams to make sure they were all closed and alive (discard any clams that are NOT clamped shut), Tara tried to open a few. It was useless. She put them in a strainer and ran them under hot water. Apparently, when the clams are cold they can hold their shells closed tightly. When they start to warm they begin to die, and they loosen their grip. Here's a picture of the clams warming up:


After a few minutes, Tara tried again. This time she was able to pry one open. She did this by cupping the clam in her palm and firmly holding it. Starting from where the shell flares out slightly, Tara eased the shucking blade between the two haves of the shell.


The shucking blade:


Some of the clams were really difficult to open and Tara's efforts were punctuated with huffs and such explanations as "Aren't you a bitch!" and "Open up mother f*cker!" Luckily no babies or old ladies were around. Here is Tara toiling away with a clam:


Once Tara had eased the knife between the two halves of the clam shell, she held it over a bowl and let the clam juice trickle out. Then, still holding the clam shell over the bowl, she reinserted the blade and cut into the shell's hinge until it opened wide, then with her hands, she opened the shell completely, letting all of the juice drip out.


When you are shucking your clams at home, you will notice that if you can get the blade through part of the shell hinge, the clam shell will easily pop open.


Once the clam shell was opened, Tara cut out the meat and put it in a separate bowl.


The odor of the clam meat was intense. They smelled of the sea - salty, fishy, and slightly muddy. My hands stunk when we were finished, and I wished we had a lemon to wipe on our skin to cut the smell (a trick I learned when shelling shrimp in Mississippi).

I, of course, attempted shucking a few clams. After about 20 minutes, I finally succeeded in shucking my first, while Tara already had gone through 3/4 of our supply. Tara smiled and said, "You're a fast learner!" I knew that my efforts had been pretty pathetic, but Tara's trained teacher voice had a tonality to it that made me beam. I showed her the opened shell. She smiled again and I felt like a proud school girl.


When I had eased my shucking knife into another clam, I tried prying the clam open with my hands (as opposed to cutting into the shell's hinge), just to see what it was like to pry that sucker open with brute force. It took a good minute or two, and while my fingers were in between the two halves of the shell, I could feel the clam closing down - a feeble attempt to fend off its pernicious predator and to avoid its ultimate fate. It was a little disturbing to be killing this little animal, but my stomach had started to growl rather loudly.

Tara was getting excited. As she opened the last clam she said, "I think shucking the clams is the most fun part. It's really satisfying to pop these open, isn't it? It's like you feel like you're living off the land." She was right. Despite my sympathies for the dying crustacean, I couldn't help but feel oddly pleased.

Once the clams were all shucked, Tara put the bowl with the clam meat in the refrigerator and dumped the clam juice into a giant stock pot. "I don't know if this is enough." She frowned, "We could have bought clam juice to supplement, but I think that's cheating." So, we had to make due with what we had.

Tara turned the heat on medium and, while the juice was heating, cubed the potatoes. Once the juice had begun to simmer, she put the potatoes in the pot. Then she began to cook six strips of bacon in a skillet until they were almost burnt - releasing the fat completely from the pork. Discarding the crisped bacon, Tara said, "You can put the bacon in, but I usually make this when vegetarians are around, so it doesn't look like there's explicitly bacon in it." "You tell them that chowder is made with bacon fat, though, right?" I asked. Tara hesitated, chuckled, and then proclaimed, "Of course!"


Tara added 1/4 stick of butter to the skillet with the bacon grease, and then, with the pan over medium heat, added a large, chopped onion. Once the onion was soft, she added it (with the fats) to the stock pot and then turned the heat on high and let it boil for a few minutes. Lowering the heat, she looked in the pot and said, "Looks like we're lucky - it seems like there was enough enough clam juice after all. That's good!" She then added cream and milk to the pot and let it simmer for about two more minutes. During that time, she brought out the clam meat and chopped it rather small. Tara informed me that "you don't want to let the clams cook for too long, or they'll turn to rubber." She then added the clams to the stock pot. I asked her how she knew when the clam meat was cooked thoroughly. She told me that it starts to look almost white and that it loses its translucency - about three minutes.

Finally, Tara added salt and pepper to taste and then began dolling out bowls of the thick concoction and topping it with chopped parsley.

At the end stages of my lesson with Tara, some friends came over to share in the food. We opened a bottle of wine and dug into our chowder, sopping up the broth with chunks of crusty baguette.

The chowder was absolutely delicious. It was salty and buttery and the contrasting textures of velvety potatoes, crusty bread, and soft and chewy clams was divine. As we finished the bottle of wine, Tara said, "This was fun. You've inspired me to cook more, Erin" and, smiling, I felt like a proud school girl.


UNCLE ERIC'S CLAM CHOWDER RECIPE
4-5 potatoes (Yukon gold, white, red, you choose)
5-6 strips bacon
1/4 stick butter
1 large onion, chopped (Vidalia or another type of sweet onion)
20-25 clams, shucked with juice and meat separated
16 oz light cream
3/4 cup milk
1/8 cup parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste

Par boil potatoes in the clam juice from the shucked clams. Turn off heat.

Fry bacon until crisp over medium heat. Remove bacon from pan and add butter to the fat. Once melted, immediately add onions to the pan, watching the heat in order that the butter does not brown or burn. Saute the onions until soft.

Add the onion mixture to the par-boiled potatoes and bring soup back to a boil, cooking until onions and potatoes reach desired doneness. Add cream and clams and simmer until the clam meat is done. Add milk, simmer until fully heated, taking care not to scald the milk. Season with salt and pepper. Ladle into bowls, top with parsley, and serve with crusty bread.

Variation #1
Add three heaping tablespoons of flour to the milk and blend until smooth before adding it to the chowder to thicken it.

Variation #2
Before adding the clams and creams to the chowder, puree the potato/onion mixture with a hand mixer.

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NYCookery: A Borough-Based Culinary Adventure

Ten months ago, I considered myself an advanced home chef who was tough to impress.

Then I moved to New York.

When I arrived in the city my kitchen ego - which had been quite large - was quickly diminished. On almost a daily basis, my taste buds are tantalized by some new fruit or spice or by a surprising meal from a tucked away corner in one of the boroughs: At a super bowl party I was given a bite of a friend's homemade baba ganoush that was the perfect blend of spice, squishy eggplant, bitter parsley, and crunchy whole grain sea salt; in Greenpoint, a Polish acquaintance introduced me to a white borscht whose sweet kielbasa base was delicately balanced by fine shavings of spicy horseradish; in a cooking class a student shared her date strudel - meticulously recreated from her grandmother's notes written in Hungarian - that was a heavenly mix of flaky, buttery, and gooey.

Though I am thoroughly impressed and excited by the culinary possibilities offered by the monumentally excellent restaurants strewn throughout the boroughs (The Good Fork, Diner, and Cafe Gitane are the first that come to mind), I am more impressed by all those home cooks out there who make delicious meals simply because they love to eat, feed, and be fed. Their abilities in the kitchen are so impressive, their food so rapturously good, their dedication to craft so admirable that I've decided to cook with them and to discover the story behind their most favorite recipes.

I'm beginning in Brooklyn. Over the course of the next year I hope to provide you, dear readers, with as many recipes from as many people throughout the borough. NYCookery will be a mixture of recipes, how-to's, interviews, and experiences based on one unifying theme: the love of food.


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