We all have our memories of Thanksgivings past. Some of them may be viewed through the Rockwellian gauze of nostalgia, where everyone is joyfully anticipating the feast while mom in her apron brings out the perfectly browned turkey and dad in his three-piece suit stands at the ready to carve. Other memories may be considerably less pastoral than what Stockbridge’s own Norman Rockwell portrayed as a Thanksgiving Shangri-la in “Freedom from Want.” Those memories may include a drunken uncle loudly dominating the dinner conversation, spouting dark, nonsensical views on (pick your controversial subject) while everyone else sits with eyes glazed hoping he’ll go back to the football game on TV, pass out, and shut up.
My Thanksgiving memories include standing behind the line in my family’s restaurant kitchen for hours plating turkey dinners, assembly-line fashion, for 400-plus guests. I never could figure out how to make a plate of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, butternut squash, glazed yams, and a green vegetable look anything more than … a pile of food. However, a pile of food is what people generally expect and want on Thanksgiving, so that’s what they got. Even after those long hours of tedious work, up to my elbows in turkey dinners, I still really enjoyed my own Thanksgiving pile of food at the end of service.
I, like so many of us, are looking forward to this year’s Thanksgiving gathering after a year when there was no Thanksgiving gathering. The Lovely Lois’ three sisters and their families will join us, along with my nephew and his family, for this year’s meal at our place. One of my favorite memories of Thanksgiving with Lois’ family is when the Hobbs sisters would sing Irish-style after the meal. They all have beautiful voices and naturally fall into an angelic harmony that only sisters who love to sing can achieve. Since my voice, to put it bluntly, is not so beautiful, my contribution is to be their adoring audience.
This year, I’m in charge of food preparation and menu choices for the gathering, and I’m adding stuffed clams, or “stuffies,” as they’re often called in Southeastern New England. The addition of stuffies this year brought back other nostalgic memories for me.
During my teenage years living in North Truro, on the tip of Cape Cod, my mom used to send me out to the bay at low tide to dig sea clams, also called Atlantic surf clams, bar clams, hen clams, or skimmers. This was not in any way a chore, as I loved roaming around the sandbars and observing all the interesting creatures caught momentarily in the microenvironments of the small tidal pools. The real bonus, though, was that the clams I dug resulted in my mom’s wonderful clam chowder.
Sea clams are six inches or more in length and are easily dug without a rake because they’re slow to burrow and usually found just a few inches below the surface of the soft, wet sand. Also, due to their large size, it takes only a half dozen or so to make a good sized pot of chowder. Early on, the clams were so plentiful it would feel like I was walking on cobblestones. My mom’s chowder clams weren’t particularly good at hide-and-seek, and would seal their fate as I walked near their hiding places by squirting saltwater from their siphons, creating mini geysers along the sandbar.
My mom used to steam the clams open and, using a meat grinder, grind the “feet” of the clams because they’re quite tough when steamed. The rest of the meat would usually be disposed of, with the stomaches sometimes used for fish bait. Sea clams have a sweet, briny flavor, but their flavor is not as assertive as the larger quahogs (CO-hogs) often used to make chowder. Don’t expect to find sea clams at your favorite seafood counter, as they’re not commonly retailed and are principally processed as canned or frozen chopped clams.
Because there were so many sea clams to be found in the sandbars, there were many empty sea clam shells to be found on the beach. The sea clams’ large, sun-bleached shells made for excellent ashtrays during the tobacco-smoke-filled late ’60s and early ’70s, but my brother and I had another use for them. We found, when thrown sidearm, they would curve like a frisbee, which made them perfectly suited as weapons of choice in our harebrained brotherly war games on the beach. It’s a wonder we never seriously hurt each other.
Sea clams are also used for the deep-fried clam strips made famous by the now almost entirely defunct Howard Johnson’s restaurants. From last reports, there’s only one Howard Johnson’s restaurant left (in Lake George, New York) from what was once a ubiquitous roadside restaurant chain. Howard Johnson’s were known for their orange roofs and accessible, comforting food — considered safe by an increasingly mobile American public because one Howard Johnson’s was virtually the same as the next. Eventually, corporate played it too safe, stopped innovating, and their menus became stodgy, which led to the chain’s demise. Meanwhile, Applebee’s, Chili’s, and the like, began appearing, serving increasingly updated menus of accessible, comforting restaurant food under different colored roofs and eventually supplanted Howard Johnson’s.
It’s not generally known, but it was one of my culinary heroes, Jacques Pépin, who codified the recipe used for Howard Johnson’s fried clam strips while he was a corporate chef there in the 1960s. America in the 1960s was a tough place to make a living as a chef before television made so many chefs, accomplished or otherwise, superstar celebrities. At the time, cooking as a profession was considered at the lower end of the social scale in America and Pépin, coming from modest means, simply wanted to make a decent living and make people happy through food. As fate would have it, he and another of my culinary heroes, Pierre Franey, were lured away from Le Pavillon, the groundbreaking French restaurant in New York, by one of Le Pavillon’s customers, Howard Johnson himself. Pépin credits his training there as a crucial step in his brilliant career, and the fried sea clam strips he developed were one of the dishes which made his career.
My clam of choice for a Thanksgiving stuffies appetizer is the often-overlooked mahogany clam, harvested from the deeper waters off the coast of Maine. They’re regularly found in supermarkets on shaved ice in mesh bags. They’re considerably less expensive and somewhat larger than littlenecks, the smallest of the quahogs. They’re also decidedly stronger flavored than littlenecks, which makes them an excellent choice to cook with other strong flavors. The stuffies I used to feast on in North Truro were made with the larger and stronger-flavored native quahogs, which are three or four inches in length. They had a Portuguese heritage due to their introduction from what was once a large Portuguese community — found at the tip of the Cape — who were attracted to jobs in what used to be a thriving fishing fleet out of Provincetown. The other dominant flavor in stuffies, apart from the meaty brininess of the clams, is Portuguese linguica or chorizo. These fermented and cured sausages contribute a smokey-sweet spiciness from smoked paprika and a rich umami flavor from the fatty and heavily salted pork.
Stuffies are a wonderful appetizer for many reasons and occasions, but they’re especially suited for a Thanksgiving meal because they freeze beautifully, allowing for one less menu item in need of preparation on that day.
Thanksgiving Stuffies
Yields about 24 stuffies
Ingredients
1 bag (approximately 18) Maine mahogany clams, scrubbed and rinsed
1 cup dry white wine
4 oz unsalted butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 stalk celery, finely chopped
½ green bell pepper, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
8 oz chorizo, skinned and finely diced
Juice from ½ a lemon
½ cup finely chopped parsley
1½ cups panko breadcrumbs
Method
Place the clams and white wine in a large, heavy pot or Dutch oven and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Steam for about 8 minutes or until the clams have opened. Discard any clams that haven’t opened after 10 minutes.
While the clams cool, melt the butter over medium-high heat and sauté the onion, green pepper, and celery together until the onion has softened, about 5 minutes.
Remove the meat from the clam shells and rinse the shells. Finely chop the clam meat. Strain the pot juices through two layers of cheesecloth and set aside.
Add the chorizo and garlic to the vegetable mixture and sauté for another 3 minutes.
Off the heat, add the clam meat, lemon juice, and parsley to the vegetable and chorizo mixture and stir to combine. Stir in the panko crumbs. Add up to ¾ cup of the strained pot liquid, stirring in ¼ cup at a time until the stuffing is moistened.
Spoon the stuffing into the reserved shells, mounding it generously and gently without packing.
If freezing, layer the stuffies, without putting them directly on top of each other, in a shallow casserole dish with plastic wrap between the layers and double layer the wrap on top. Defrost the stuffies overnight in the refrigerator and bake in a preheated 350F degree oven for about 20 minutes, until the stuffing starts to brown. Serve with lemon wedges and hot sauce.
