Seafood Day 3 – Steamed Oysters And Clams

It's official - Spring is here, even though it may snow a little next week.

This would have been posted yesterday, but I decided to give you a two day break from oysters. After eating oysters for two previous meals (see 2/28 & 3/2), enough time had passed that we were at risk of losing those remaining along with the littleneck clams, so they both had to be eaten. Bev and I were really busy all day, and while I’d planned linguini and white clam sauce for dinner, neither of us wanted to cook. We decided to go for something very easy – just steamed those babies.

I steamed the clams in this concoction that came from What’s Cooking America.  I used 1/3 of this recipe and still had way too much - it was good but not great.

3 tablespoons butter
1 small white onion, coarsely chopped
6 parsley stems
3 cloves garlic, lightly chopped
1 bottle dry white wine
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes

I’d learned to cook and eat steamed clams from my dad when we lived in South Jersey in the 60’s, but I remember they were always like eating rubber. This recipe cautioned to take them up as soon as they began to open or they would be rubbery. So I took them up earlier than I’d been taught and sure enough the ones fully opened were like rubber and the ones barely open were much more tender and sweeter.

The oysters were steamed in water for 10 minutes as they were for Bev and she likes hers pretty done.

Following the picture, she removed the oysters from their shells and put them in a bowl of melted garlic butter – I tried one and it was very good.  If left to my own devices, oysters would almost always be eaten raw and clams would go into chowder.  But for those of you like Bev, who like the taste of oysters, but can't handle eating them raw, we've had them cooked three different and delicious ways over the last few days and there's still our favorite cooked version - fried, which we also had one night.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry