up until about 10 years ago you couldn’t pay me to eat brussels sprouts but for whatever reason my taste buds changed and now they’re one of my favorite vegetables. fresh from the garden, steamed with a generous dollop of organic valley pasture butter.
kris and odin do not share my love of brussels sprouts which means i get them all 🙂
and, yes, they really did get their name purportedly because of their popularity in .
it’s something of a birthday tradition for kris to get some clams flown in from main for my birthday and this year was no exception. two pounds of clams arrived at our house the day before my birthday from simplylobsters.com in lewiston, maine which is sort-of close to my ancestral homeland in and around machias, maine which is way, way, waaaaaaay down east.
typically i make steamed clams because, well, there are few things better than a perfectly steamed clam dunked in broth and slathered in butter! but this year i thought it’d be fun to try my hand at fried clams because if there is one thing better than a steamed clam, it’s a fried clam!
i’m a traditionalist at heart so a simple “clam shack” style recipe is what i wanted. light and minimal with no fancy herbs and spices to get in the way of the taste of the clams. i found the perfect clam-shack style fried clams recipe over at leite’s culinaria ( side note: i find it amusing that the yankee cook recipe has a bunch of herbs and spices. tsk. tsk. )
i couldn’t agree more with this quote from leite’s culinaria recipe ( even though it does include cayenne ):
“When I made this recipe, adapted from the great Jasper White, I was tempted to doctor up the coating mix with all kinds of herbs and spices. (Yes, for a moment I thought of myself as the Colonel Sanders of Seafood.) “The secret to fried clams,” says Chickie Aggelakis, owner of The Clam Box in Ipswich, Mass., “is the flavor of the clams.” The coating and its crunch protect the tender belly meat. Mucking it up with spices—which is hard to resist—should be avoided at all costs.”
ingredients
1 cup corn flour (or masa harina)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 1/2 to 2 pounds of shucked whole-belly steamer clams
4-6 cups canola oil
1 cup buttermilk ( you could use somethign lesser but i recommend organic valley buttermilk )
first, shuck the clams if they didn’t arrive already shucked. don’t cut yourself! it’s super important to tap the foot of the clam before shucking and discard any clams that remain open or don’t respond when tapped!
rinse and drain clams colander and stir together with *cough* organic valley buttermilk *cough* in a large bowl ( o.k. yes, i work for organic valley and am perhaps a bit biased but seriously, this is no time to go for a lesser quality ingredient 🙂 let sit while you prepare the rest of the ingredients and heat the oil to 380°F or so.
combine the flours, salt, and and black and cayenne peppers in a largish mixing bowl or pie plate. you want something big enough to dredge clams through. using a slotted spoon or whatever you have that will allow the excess buttermilk to drip away without allowing the clams to fall back into the bowl.
then, pick up a few clams, let the excess buttermilk drip off, and dredge them through the batter mixture. move them about to coat evenly.
shake off the excess breading and dunk them the fryer. let them cook for a 20 seconds or so before disturbing so the breading had time to adhere to the clam. then stir the clams around to ensure they cook evenly. use your head and don’t splatter hot grease everywhere!
cook until golden brown. maybe about 1-2 minutes per batch depending on how many clams you fry in a batch. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY DO NOT OVERCOOK THEM!
i was pondering making 1 pound into steamers and 1 pound into fried clams but i ended up making all two pounds nito fried clams because i had such a strong hankering for them. and, holy cow, am i glad i did.
seriously, i have never had fried clams this good outside of maine. and i dare say i’ve only had clams this good in a few rare spots on the coast. tender, light and minimal. not too heavy at all and the clam flavor really burts through.
especially when you break open the stomach between your teeth!
to celebrate losing 90 pounds by the new year, i whipped up a 100% grass-fed, organic, bacon, blue cheese, olive burger with caramelized onions and onion rings.
losing 90 pounds involved lots of running and careful consideration of what i’ve been eating for the past year. and while i’d be lying if i said i haven’t had a burger in a year, this was the best one in a long time.
i will also admit that, because it was so rich, i could only eat half of it 🙂
and since i now can roughly estimate the number of calories in pretty much everything i eat i’m obligated to mention that one of The Greatest Burgers, EVAR will set you back about 800 calories.
everything in moderation, except moderation!
excellent news that the american academy of pediatrics released a clinical report that finally highlights the benefits of organic food, including lower exposure to pesticides for consumers and the workers who produce the food, lower exposure to drug-resistant bacteria and lower overall environmental impact than conventional farming and recommends that, “…Pediatricians should incorporate this evidence when discussing the health and environmental impact of organic foods and organic farming..”
as the organic trade association press release notes this is a major milestone for organics since the pediatric party line has historically been that there’s no difference that makes a difference between organic and conventional foods.
if anything, the AAP clinical report soft pedals the research on pesticide exposure in particular. the pesticide action network also released a report, “A Generation in Jeopardy: How pesticides are undermining our children’s health & intelligence” that reviews dozens of recent scientific studies on the impacts of pesticides on children’s health. the emerging evidence of links between pesticide usage and childhood health harms are impossible to ignore.
it’s hard for me to imagine how anyone can read the 44 page report and not decide to purchase organic food ( and all the more so now that we know GMOs have unleashed a pesticide gusher ).
fall is here and the temperatures are dropping and sometimes you just want some good old fashioned warm comfort food like, say, cheeseburger soup. and, of course you could use something like cheddar cheese but if you really want to nail the nostalgic comfort in comfort food, you’re typically going to find a processed cheese like processed american cheesein the ingredients list.
for those of us who aren’t into the emulsified, extruded processed cheese world, the geniuses at organic valley ( *cough* my employer *cough* ) have come up with a 100% real, unprocessed american cheese! it has all the mild, melty american cheesyness you expect but it’s actually made from nothing but 100% real, organic cheese. imagine that!
so i thought i’d give it a try in this taste of home cheeseburger soup recipe, simply substituting the processed cheese with ov american singles. i also doubled the amount of ground beef, because, well, why not 🙂
and wowza. it’s really, really, really(!) good. definitely going to be in our regular soup rotation from now on.
slightly modified directions from the taste of home cheeseburger soup recipe:
ingredients
1 pound ground beef
3/4 cup chopped onion
3/4 cup shredded carrots
3/4 cup diced celery
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried parsley flakes
4 tablespoons butter, divided
3 cups chicken broth
4 cups diced peeled potatoes (1-3/4 pounds)
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 package ( 8 ounces ) ov american singles
1-1/2 cups milk
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup sour cream
directions
in a largish saucepan, brown beef, drain and set aside. saute the onion, carrots, celery, basil and parsley in 1 tablespoon butter until tender. add the broth, potatoes and beef; bring to a boil. reduce heat; cover and simmer for 10-12 minutes or until potatoes are tender.
in a small skillet, melt remaining butter. add flour; cook and stir for 3-5 minutes or until bubbly. add to soup; bring to a boil. cook and stir for 2 minutes. reduce heat to low. stir in the cheese, milk, salt and pepper; cook and stir until cheese melts. remove from the heat; blend in sour cream.
six years after i started documenting my dislike of cilantro ( and here ) after learning i was not alone upon reading a boingboing post, they point to new research on the genetic basis for why cilantro-haters hate cilantro which is linked to a variation in a gene associated with our sense of smell. see also previous reports, “getting to the root of the great cilantro divide” and “cilantro haters, it’s not your fault”.
and it came to pass that it was my night on dinner duty and i was under a clear directive to use leftovers in the fridge in whatever concoction i could concoct. an easy enough task since we had just had black beans and rice topped with cheese and a side of kale the night before. i thought, i’ll just mix them all together with a bit of garlic, fold into a tortilla shell, cover with cheese and heat in the oven for a bit for a quick and easy burrito!
as i quickly grabbed ingredients, i notice some leftover refried beans in a container, so gave it a quick smell test, noted that it didn’t smell rotten, but also didn’t really smell like refried beans either. it had a vaguely familiar smell. one that i couldn’t quite place. but i was on a mission to keep on the dinner making schedule and brushed aside any nagging thoughts that something might be amiss.
after 15 or 20 minutes in a 350°F oven the burritos emerged piping hot and covered in melted cheesy goodness and we started to eat them. straight away, odin refused to take more than one bite. too much garlic ( this is a common dinner issue. i keep thinking i can sneak it almost never works and i’m denial about possibly living without garlic for the next 10 years ).
kris ate half a burrito before declaring that they had too much garlic.
i, happily, devoured several ( with corn torillas in keeping with my mostly gluten free lifestyle ) while proclaiming they Most Certainly Did Not Contain Too Much Garlic. no sirree, they did not!
the next morning, while getting ready odin ready for school i noticed there was another container of refried beans in the fridge with just a small amount gone.
huh? someone just had to have a small bite of refried beans for breakfast? ever so slowly it dawned on me as i raced out the door to yell down to kris and odin as they walked down the street towards school.
“HEY, KRIS, SAY WHAT’S IN THAT CONTAINER IN THE FRIDGE THAT LOOKS LIKE REFRIED BEANS?”
if i only could have taken a picture of her face as she turned around and slowly registered the real meaning of my question.
“WHAT?! NOOOOOOOO! TELL ME YOU DIDN’T!”
and that’s when i remembered that, unusually, we have soft dog food in the house to smother in the antibiotics pushkin has to choke down to help treat his latest lyme disease flare up.
i don’t think odin is going to let me forget the Dog Food Burrito Incident. ever.