Clamming

After completing a rigorous summer minor program at the University i was allows a 10 day break at the end of August, I used this break to go back home to Long Island NY and catch up with some people who i hadn't seen since Christmas. On my first full day back I went clamming with my friends Mikey and Jay, I had never been clamming all my years living on the shore and I'm glad i didn't let any more time pass by before trying it.

It was 10 AM and we took Jay's boat out from the dock behind his house. After making our way through the channel behind his house (5 MPH speed limit) we reached the mouth of the bay and he opened the engine up. Mikey and I sat in the front of the boat and held on to our Heinikens for dear life, the boat was bouncing over waves and with the wind blasting past our ears attempting any conversation was just a waste of time.

We reached our destination directly under the Robert Moses Causeway Bridge and anchored the boat. Even though we were a few hundred yards offshore the water was only chest deep so we put Dave Matthews in the boats cd player, grabbed a bucket and a few beers and hopped in the luke warm water.

Clamming is a little awkward at first, while walking around the murky water you have to dig in the mud-like sand with your feet and feel for the clams. At first it feels kind of nasty, especially when you hit a patch of seaweed but once you find your first clam all you think about is getting the next one. We basked in the sunlight all afternoon drinking and clamming, catching about 100 clams in all. Once dusk came we hopped back on the boat and shot back to my friends house.

That night we shucked all the clams and cut them into little pieces, saving the shells. One trip to Walbaum's and we had bacon bits, paremsean, garlic, butter, pepper and bread crumbs. We threw all the ingredients in a giant bowl, then threw the clams in, mixed it all around and redistributed the new concoction back into the open shells. Then they were tossed in the over, the exact recipe we used is a little fuzzy because we werent exactly sober, but our homemade baked clams could have won us a spot on Top Chef, thats for sure.