Clams Recipes Synergies

Sooooooo... you know what I turn to when I'm all tired and stressed?

Clams.

Clams fucking rock.

Baked Stuffed Clams

1 red bell pepper, finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
8 oz mushrooms, sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
8 Cherrystone Clams
1 12oz pack of bacon, finely chopped.
At least 1/4 cup Freshly Grated Parmesan
Bread Crumbs
Chopped Italian Parsley
Some cooking wine (1/4 cup?)

Clams Oreganata

2 dozen littleneck clams
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup bread crumbs
1 teaspoon italian herbs
At least 2 tablespoons Freshly Grated Parmesan cheese
Chopped Italian Parsley
Bacon Grease

Render the Bacon:
Chop up the bacon and render in a large skillet over medium heat. Now's a good time to finish up your chopping/slicing/grating/cleaning up. Render until you have crispy bits and a good about of grease. About 10-15 minutes.

Saute the veges
Empty the grease into a small bowl. Turn the heat on high. Toss in the stuffed clams veges (not the parsley). Add some black pepper (NO SALT). Saute/Sweat until the shrooms and onions are cooked. Because there're a good amount of veges, they'll probably steam up and you can use that to deglaze the skillet. Otherwise as some water or cooking wine. Remove to a mixing bowl.

Cook the Cherrystones
Toss in the Cherrystone clams with the cooking wine. After about 3-5 minutes the clams should start to open up. Remove them as soon as they open.

Separate the clam shells and take out the meat. Rinse out the shells and place on a baking sheet. Chop up the meat and mix in with the stuffed clams mixture.

Cook the Littlenecks?
Now you're supposed to shuck these guys but after a couple attempts (I never bought a shucking knife, which my parents swear by) I figured you know what... I don't really care if it's overcooked and sometimes the clams that don't close while I'm cleaning them are actually alive and when (up until I cook them.). Soooo why not.

Toss into the same skillet, which should have a good amount of liquid from the wine and cherrystones, but this time over medium heat at a low boil. Again, remove the clams upon opening, even just a bit. Separate the shells.

Finishing up the Stuffed Clams
Add bread crumbs and cheese to the mixture so that everything's coated with cheese and bread crumbs. Add some parsley to taste. ASo now you have a good amount of clams liquor that's also deglazed the bacon bits in the pan. Slowly add the liquor to taste (add some, mix, taste.) Spoon the mixture into the shells.

In a preheated oven at 350 degrees, bake for 15 minutes.

Finishing up the Clams Oreganata
While the stuffed clams are baking, you can mix up the clams oreganata mixture, and mix in clams liquor and bacon grease to taste. In my mind, you can never have too much parmesan cheese in it so feel free to add more. So now you should have this paste that you can smear onto the half-shell clams. Place on a baking sheet.

When the baked clams are finished, take them out to cool and turn the oven to the broiler setting (or if you have one of them bottom broilers, I guess you can do this whenever you damned well please.) Wait about 3 minutes for the broiler to heat up and put in the clams on the top rack. Leaving the door slightly ajar, broil for about 1-2 minutes or until the clams are golden brown.

Serve both with some lemon.

Garlic Cheese Bread

Because bread sizes differ you can't really put a measurement on the cheeses and oil. Eyeball it. If you have too much of oil or cheese, toss it in with a pasta dish.

1 french baguette sliced crosswise. If you can find any other hard crusted bread, that works as well. The thing is in st. louis that's the only hard crusted bread I can buy. If you like soft crusted breads... *shakes head* ah wells... Anna likes soft bread.

Parmesan, Gouda, and/or Asiago cheeses,shredded. All work on their own and they all work together. A good 8 ounces should do

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped.
1 teaspoon italian herbs

Heat oil in small saucepan on medium heat and brown garlic in oil. Remove from heat and add the italian herbs. This is so that the herbs won't get burnt.

Turn on Broiler.

Arrange bread on a non-stick pan sheet and spoon oil, with the garlic and herbs, onto the bread. One small spoonful for 2 slices of bread should do.

Sprinkle cheese on bread.

Put into broiler from 30 seconds to 1 minute. Keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't burn.

Asian BBQ Chicken Skewers

Topic: Recipe
Cuisine: Chinese

Quick. Easy.

Chicken Thighs cut into strips
Skewers
Chinese BBQ (Sa Ca) Sauce


Hoisin Sauce

Marinate Chicken thighs in a 2:1 ratio of the Hoisin Sauce and Sa Ca sauce. There's no need for pre-mixing. Just eyeball some spoonfuls of Hoisin Sauce to the degree where you think all the chicken thighs would be just covered, then spoon in half the amount of sa ca sauce.

Let marinate for at least 2 hours.

Skewer and grill.

I didn't really have a good picture of the chicken skewers individually but they're the ones... in the middle right.

Salsa

Topic: Recipe
Cuisine: Mexican

Made with Jim's tomatoes.

2 cups chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped red onion
1 jalapeno pepper... to know if you're buying a hot one give it a smell... you should be able to smell the spiciness.
1 lime
tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon kosher salt. if using regular salt go with a half teaspoon.
1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
A small bunch of chopped cilatro leaves.
1 clove garlic.

Mix... let sit for half hour.

Mussels / Clams / Steamers Appetizer

Topic: Recipe
Cuisine: Continental

Kevin asked and I responded.

1 batch of your mollusks (about a dozen)
1/4 cup white cooking wine
2 cloves chopped garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil.... or butter.

french bread for dipping

clean the mollusks under cold water with old toothbrush / scour thinger

heat a large pan to medium high heat... big enough so that the mussels don't stack... if you don't have one that big just use the widest thing you have that'll hold them all.

saute garlic in the oil a bit then put in the mollusks. pour in wine. cover.

these cook pretty fast so keep an eye on them for when they open. if they're stacked a bit stir them around so that the unopened ones on the bottom can open.

filter the juice if you think it's needed (if there's sand). Take 4 roasted garlic cloves and sautee with the juice. You can thicken this up a bit with some cornstarch or flour.