Long Island: Land of Clams – Clams with Garlicky Chorizo Broth and Toasty Bread

Long Island is the land of clams. From the original native peoples to the multicultural residents of Long Island today, clams have always been a tasty part of the culinary repertoire.

Surrounded by salt water on all sides, with sandy and muddy habitats aplenty, there are four edible species of clams found in Long Island waters. There’s the soft shell clam, burrowed deep in the wet sands of bay beaches. These are steamers, dipped in a bowl of their cooking broth and melted butter. Surf clams, the largest of the bunch, are an open water species, living in the bottom sands of the coastal Atlantic off Long Island’s south shore and in the depths of Long Island Sound. Dredged by trawlers, surf clams are chopped and canned, cut into strips and fried, and often find their way into chowders. The most mysterious are razor clams, burying themselves deep in the mud of calm, protected bays. They are long and thin, like an old straight razor, harder to find than the other species. Best known and most common is the hard clam or quahog, sometimes called littlenecks, topnecks, cherrystones, or chowders, depending on their size. These are the clams served raw on the half shell, as baked stuffed clams, clams casino, or atop a heaping bowl of pasta.

After eating them, native peoples valued the purple-tinged portion of the shell of hard clams as wampum or money, long before Europeans ventured to this part of the world. In the 1970s, Long Island’s Great South Bay, shallow, calm, and protected from the open ocean by Fire Island, was the world’s greatest producer of hard clams, with New York providing more than 60% of the country’s supply. College students would skip traditional summer jobs, earning quick cash digging clams from shallow skiffs during the vacation. People used to joke that you could cross Great South Bay without getting your feet wet by hopping from one bayman’s boat to the next.

Baymen are now a rarity on Great South Bay, as they overfished the stocks and could not earn a living working for themselves. Local towns and villages across Long Island now stock bays with millions of small, hatchery-raised seed clams each year, to ensure the industry survives, the few remaining jobs are not lost, and there is a continuous supply for hungry diners. On my way to work early in the morning as the sun rises, I drive along my local bay to take in the water view. A handful of baymen are readying for a solitary day out on the water raking hard clams.

I’ve never owned a bayman’s clam rake, with its pole that can be upwards of 20 feet long and which is used to scrape the bay bottom and unearth the bivalves from their briny home. But I have dug for hard clams with my feet, dragging them through the soft sand until you feel shell, reaching down quickly into the shallow water before the clam burrows deeper into the sediments.

Clams are everywhere on Long Island. Clams oreganata in Italian restaurants; sautéed with black bean sauce in Chinese establishments; on the half shell at steakhouses; and fried at seafood shacks, not to mention shells littering the beaches. I’ve been to summer parties where the host procures a half bushel of just-harvested clams from a friendly bayman. You simply place them on a hot grill until they steam in their own shell and pop open, ready to eat, maybe topped with butter, cocktail sauce, or a mignonette. Clams are a great local food, providing jobs, helping to clean local bays by filtering algae when they feed, and supplying the base of a tasty meal. Long Island is the land of clams.

Clams with Garlicky Chorizo Broth and Toasty Bread

I adapted this recipe from a friend who served them at a summer gathering. He threw a cheap aluminum lasagna pan on the grill filled with clams and covered in foil. They steamed for a few minutes and we ate them, with clam juice dripping down our chins. When I asked for the recipe, all he told me was a list of ingredients; no quantities. The recipe doesn’t really require any measuring. No need to do much else besides throw them in a covered pot. However, for maximum flavor, I’ve listed rough quantities and added a few simple extra steps.

15 minutes, plus soaking time, serves 2 as an appetizer

1-2 dozen hard clams, preferably cherrystones (which about 3 inches long), scrubbed

¼ cup sea salt (or table salt) for purging clams

5 garlic cloves, divided, 4 of them roughly chopped

3 Tbsp. olive oil, divided

¼ tsp. kosher salt

4 thick slices crusty bread

1-2 oz. dry-cured chorizo, sliced into ⅛-inch rounds or half moons

½ tsp. crushed red pepper flakes

2 Tbsp. parsley, chopped

1. Clean the clams by scrubbing them and placing them in a bowl of cold salty water (about as salty as seawater, roughly ¼ cup salt per half gallon of water). Allow them to sit in the water for an hour or two to purge sand. Discard any clams that have not closed tightly.
2. Heat a gas grill on high. Make the toasty bread by crushing 1 clove of garlic in a small bowl. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil and the kosher salt. Stir to combine and brush or spoon evenly on one side of each slice of bread. Place the bread on the grill grates oiled side up. Allow to grill until bottom is browned and lightly charred in spots. Flip and grill oiled side down until it is browned and garlic is slightly cooked. (Alternatively, do this in a toaster, without flipping, and frankly, you can skip the fanfare and just serve high-quality toast.)
3. Heat a stockpot (that has a tight fitting lid) large enough to fit all of the clams on medium. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil and the sliced chorizo. Allow to cook, stirring frequently until the chorizo starts to get crispy around the edges, about 4 or 5 minutes.
4. Add the 4 cloves of roughly chopped garlic and allow to cook, stirring frequently, until the garlic is softened but not burned, about 2 minutes.
5. Add the crushed red pepper flakes and ¼ cup water. Drain the clams, add them to the pot, and stir to coat. Cover with a tight-fitting lid.
6. Allow the clams to steam until the shells open, about 3 to 5 minutes, turning the heat down if necessary. Discard any clams that have not opened. Place in a serving dish along with the garlicky chorizo broth, and garnish with chopped parsley. Serve hot with toasty bread for dipping.

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