Fruits de Mer I: The incredible edible clam...fried ones in particular

One of the remarkable things about this part of the Northwest is the fish and other seafood. The salmon is incredible. It is some of the most delicious fish I've ever eaten, as much because it is so fresh as for any other quality - and there are many other fine qualities. We have oysters the size of baby shoes that are luscious and briny and a delight raw or cooked. The mussels need some help from garlic, wine and spices to bring out their flavor, but that's true of mussels anywhere. And shrimp (mostly called "prawns" in deference to the Britishism migrating down from Canada) are not local but are ubiquitous and good for all that. The halibut from Alaskan waters is definitely as wonderful as the salmon. And Dungeness Bay with its deservedly famous crabs lies just southwest of here. But the Northwest doesn't know clams. There are clams here but they are a misunderstood and underrated mollusk indeed. Most appalling to a New Englander is that there is not a decent fried clam to be had. Sad to say the pallid, homogenized, characterless version of fried clams available here is (I am ashamed even that I must mention it!) clam strips. It's as if the whole Northwest were one, huge Howard Johnson's. For those of you who don't know from such things, clam strips are to clams what Velveeta is to cheese. The one is derived from the other, thinks of itself as like the other but has been so processed and degraded as to be a sad parody of the real thing. Clam strips are, at best, the "foot" muscle of a large clam of the sort we New Englanders refer to as quahogs. We refer to them by that term because it's the term that the Algonquian nations of native peoples taught my starving, pilgrim ancestors to use as they smashed the shells on rocks and dug out the meat rather than collapse from malnutrition. It may not have originally referred to the clam at all but could mean something on the order of "dumb-ass foreigner whom I probably should let starve". I am not sure but I would not be surprised to find that, much like the ubiquitous and worthless chicken nugget, clam strips are probably pounded and ground and shredded and reconstituted into a pasteurized, processed clam-food that is then coated with an obscuring coating of flour and breadcrumbs then foisted off on a public unaware of the real thing. I am a confirmed atheist. I neither need nor want a big, imaginary friend in the sky as George Carlin so aptly puts it. But if I were looking for one palpable and irrefutable argument for the existence of a good and benevolent god who wishes his human children well, I would cite the clam. It is delicious, sweet, edible in just about any form (except clam strips) and there for a bit of digging just below the tide line. If I were a god who looked out for his creatures, I'd certainly give them clams. A real fried clam starts out as a soft-shell clam, a variety that is oval and has, as the name implies, a thin shell. These clams don't have as thick a membrane as do quahogs and similar hard shell clams. The consequence is that they seem "open" or stringy in appearance (not in texture). Like virtually all commercially sold clams either hard or soft shelled, they are dug from the tidal flats on the ocean verge and then placed in holding tanks. In those tanks they are covered in filtered seawater and fed a diet of cornmeal before being sold whole or shelled. The prime feature is that they are the whole clam and include the "bellies". Though it sounds rather on the unappetizing side, the "belly" is the alimentary tract which, in these clams, is now full of cornmeal. They are sweet and delicious in a way that the pasteurized, processed clam strip can never be. And before you get all perturbed about this part of the clam, remember that if you eat whole oysters or mussels, you are eating the same parts though those parts are concealed. So a fair question to ask would be if I have access to such wonderful native seafood, what do I want with clams that would have to be shipped 3,600 miles? The answer is complicated. Most of the time I don't pine for real fried clams. Even when I do I won't waste my money on trying to substitute the entirely unsatisfactory clam strips. I try to drown my craving in some of the local seafood distractions. But then the desire occasionally overwhelms. It spurs me rather in the manner of something else for which I occasionally get a craving. My paternal grandmother made her own kielbasa. It was fresh, not smoked, and wonderful, full of garlic, mustard seeds that got caught in your teeth and delicious beyond description. She also made potato kielbasa, of which most commercial kishka is a distant cousin, and, above all, potato pancakes. Around Easter Steve's Quality Market in downtown Salem, Massachusetts had fresh kielbasa that came very close to Babci's but I make my own potato pancakes, always seeking and never finding the elusive affirmation from my memory that I've duplicated her unrecorded recipe exactly. My Babci has been gone for 20 years but her kielbasa and potato pancakes are both comfort food and a way of connecting with my memories of her. Fried clams have a rather similar effect. They connect me to an essential part of my former home. They have a quality of memory, of longing for an idealized past and warm, embracing nostalgia that few other things recall. Real fried clams carry the baggage of the summer of 1959 on Cape Cod, summer nights at Jimmie's of Savin Rock in West Haven, Connecticut both before and after the old amusement park was gone, of meals on whitewashed picnic tables beside roadside stands, of the Frankie's drive-in at the corner of Watertown Avenue and Aurora Street in Waterbury, Connecticut and Kelley's on Revere Beach, of an evening meal with two college friends, one now gone, at Doane's in Swampscott, also in Massachusetts. They taste of watching Fourth of July fireworks from the parking lot of Farnham's in Essex, Massachusetts with 3 of the friends I love most in all the world and a bit of comfort on an icy day at Woodman's, just a little closer to the centre of Essex, after laying a stone on the grave of another person I loved dearly and deeply. For better or worse no other seafood, regardless of how fresh, how plentiful or how good will ever carry the freight and savor of all those memories. The best of the oysters, salmon and crab found here, wonderful as it is, cannot match the wonder of a plate of real fried clams. But then there's also Connecticut River Shad, but that's another entry.