Clams

50 littleneck clams, picked over, discard any with broken shells 2 cups water Bottled clam juice (optional) 1 ounce meaty salt pork, rind removed and cut into ?-inch dice 1 tablespoon butter (optional) 1 clove garlic 1 medium yellow onion, diced small 1 stalk of celery, diced small 1 sprig fresh thyme 1 dried bay leaf 4 or 5 potatoes, peeled and cut into ?-inch dice Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper 1/2 cup cup heavy cream 1. Scrub clams and rinse well.

First battered by winds, then ripped by the ocean, a stretch of the New Jersey Shore is now choking on the stench of 150,000,000 dying clams - the aromatic aftermath of this month's devastating coastal storm. And folks from Longport to Atlantic City are raising their own stink about the millions of unwanted guests who have overstayed their welcome. After the Jan. 4 storm that crashed over the Shore, beaches on Absecon Island were knee-deep in clams, most very much alive. For the first week, the shellfish merely posed an aesthetic problem.

Life hasn't been the same for David Powell since a ton of clams fell on him in February. His attorney says Powell has been out of work, his medical bills are mounting and he's got a pain in his lower back that won't quit. And so yesterday, Powell, a man in his early 20s from Erma, Cape May County, filed suit in federal court in Camden citing the Jones Act, a law governing maritime matters. The suit names Boat Gulf Air Inc., the company that owns the Gulf Air, a clamming boat.

The three fishermen slowly guided their boat through the choppy water of Barnegat Bay, searching for the right spot to deposit their cargo of shellfish. "Right here," said Glenn Tilden, who was piloting the craft. Tilden's co-workers hoisted the heavy bags of clams to the side of the boat. They had spent the morning digging the clams from the mud of Raritan Bay, 30 miles to the north, and now they were casting them overboard again. The clams sank like rocks into the dark water.

Maryland watermen are trying to figure out why clams they pull from the Chesapeake Bay have high levels of bacteria when they hit New England markets. Since June, health officials in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York have embargoed about a dozen Maryland seafood dealers because tests showed high bacteria levels in the clams and could lead to sickness in humans. "It's a mystery. It could be on this end. It could be on that end," said Danny Elburn, 30, a Rock Hall, Md., seafood dealer whose clams have been banned in Maine and Massachusetts.

In a biology lab a few hundred yards from this town's famous Civil War battlefields, a scientist is feeding clams Prozac. Peter Fong has found that when clams are under the influence of the antidepression medicine, they go into reproductive overdrive. Within a few hours, out pop baby clams. The phenomenon is not unique to the fingernail clams that thrive in the creek that runs through this town's famous battlefields. When Fong, a biologist at Gettysburg College, feeds Prozac to another species - zebra mussels - they spew sperm and eggs all over the place.

Think oranges, and Florida comes to mind. Think potatoes, and Idaho pops up. But what about clams? Or flounder? Draw a blank? Too many people draw blanks when it comes to seafood. They certainly don't think New Jersey when they think seafood. So says Neil Berger, founder and president of the newly minted Cape May Seafood Producers Association, a federation of five major seafood companies that work out of the port of Cape May. It so happens that New Jersey clammers harvest two of every three clams consumed worldwide, Berger said.

Let's play a word-association game about seasonal foods. Spring: shad roe. Summer: tomatoes. Fall: pumpkin pie. Winter: clams. Clams in winter? Now, I love them so much that I'd be first in line if Ben & Jerry's ever put them in ice cream. Clams are good any way, any time of year. But the peak season to reach for the shucking knife and steamer pot is when hoarfrost rimes the salt meadows bordering New Jersey's bays. Don't take my word for it. Listen to Sid Martin, a guru of bivalves.

A combination of mechanical failure and human error may be to blame for the grounding of a 107-foot clamming vessel off Atlantic City, the Coast Guard said yesterday. The Lisa Kim, which beached Tuesday, was freed yesterday after nearly a day and a half of effort. After two failed attempts to move the boat from a sandbar about 100 yards offshore, rescuers were able to refloat it just before the morning high tide. Hundreds of spectators lining the Boardwalk to watch the operation cheered as a seven-foot wave swelled into the side of the clammer and finally dislodged it. The ship, which had been dredging clams with a crew of four since early Monday, apparently encountered trouble with one of its engines and was headed back to port just before the mishap, said Lt. Cmdr.

On weekends, people stood in line on North Broad Street, waiting to get into Fisher's Restaurant, where the fried oysters were plump and crusty, the cherrystone clams firm and tender, and the check downright reasonable. Inside the cavernous establishment, which was done up like a Tudor castle, owner Miles W. Fisher could be found inspecting every dish that came out of the kitchen. Mr. Fisher, tall and stocky with white hair, a bowtie and immaculate chef's whites, was a tough man to please.

50 littleneck clams, picked over, discard any with broken shells 2 cups water Bottled clam juice (optional) 1 ounce meaty salt pork, rind removed and cut into ?-inch dice 1 tablespoon butter (optional) 1 clove garlic 1 medium yellow onion, diced small 1 stalk of celery, diced small 1 sprig fresh thyme 1 dried bay leaf 4 or 5 potatoes, peeled and cut into ?-inch dice Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper 1/2 cup cup heavy cream 1. Scrub clams and rinse well.

Here is an excerpt from the blog "My Daughter's Kitchen. " A few years working in New England gave me a taste of some of the best "chowda" I had ever eaten, both at little corner restaurants, seafood shacks on the Cape, and of course, at the famed Legal Sea Foods in Boston. Everyone had their own version, but the best were smooth and rich soups, stocked with clams, potatoes, a little onion, and a healthy splash of cream. Back in the Philadelphia area, I found it hard to find the same soup, as most restaurant renditions were dense and gloppy, thickened with flour and resonating with a strong flavor of bacon.

French bistro cooking is making a big splash with its use of fresh ingredients to make simple, peasant dishes. This bistro dinner comes from Languedoc-Roussillon. Fresh fish from the Mediterranean and lots of garlic are two important ingredients.   La Bourride Makes 2 servings 3/4 pound red potatoes 1 cup sliced carrots 1 cup sliced celery 2 large leaves Swiss chard, leaves and stalk, sliced (1 cup)

SEA ISLE CITY, N.J. - Mike Monichetti's family has been selling fresh seafood along a fabled stretch of bayfront here known as Fish Alley for precisely 100 years. Now, that's a lot of clams. So when Monichetti, 52, the third generation running Mike's Dock Seafood - a dockside establishment whose customers routinely line up around the block and wait hours for a table - decides if it has been a good summer at the Jersey Shore, he does so with a discerning eye. All along the state's 127-mile coastline, businesses and officials have begun to measure the summer of 2011.

For most of my summer days at the Jersey Shore, I'm in full Food Scout mode in restaurants up and down the coast. But once the work meals taper off toward the end of my visit, nothing pleases me more than inviting some friends over to the rental house for my own rendition of Big Night. There have been many variations from year to year, but the feast has always revolved around two of the Shore's greatest natural assets: clams with pasta, and crusty Italian loaves from one of Atlantic City's classic bakeries transformed into garlic bread.

On the Bravo kitchen-competition series Top Chef , the cheftestants are charged with creating cutting-edge food on the spur of the moment. Two weeks after his win on Season 7, Kevin Sbraga had us out to his real kitchen - in the childhood Willingboro home he shares with his pastry-chef wife, Jesmary, daughter Jenae, 5, and newborn son Angelo. Mealtime at the Sbragas' place is nothing fancy, and the Top Chef, 31, cooks on an electric stovetop. One of his favorite dishes is a one-pot creation of steamed clams and Italian sausage on top of chickpeas, perfect for Sunday after church.

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. - Crews have begun decontaminating an Atlantic City-based clam boat that was isolated off New Bedford after it pulled up munitions shells tainted with mustard gas. Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Jeff Hall said officials hoped the ESS Pursuit would be free to leave by Thursday. He said cleanup crews were relying heavily on bleach, which dilutes the mustard gas, and elbow grease. The crew pulled up two shells with its catch Sunday off Long Island. The next day, crewman Konstantin Burndshov was hospitalized with blisters from the gas exposure.

BETHLEHEM, Pa. - Those of us who occasionally tell Andy Reid how to do his job can't get too upset when the coach tries to tell us how to do ours. So it would be disingenuous to react with outrage after Reid turned the media tent on the Lehigh practice fields into his own personal woodshed yesterday afternoon. It would be almost as disingenuous as Reid's own fake ire about the way reporters chased news of linebacker Stewart Bradley's injury. The whole episode was, after all, Reid's own fault.

Have you ever devoured a bag of "freakies"? Some might call them the misfits, the cast-offs, and the un-round, the misshapen byproducts of a batter hopper at Brown's draining low. But I call them the marvelous mutants of the doughnut world, collectible curlicues of squiggle and crunch that have the fresh crispness I crave, but aren't quite plump enough for the company of a proper dozen. But who needs a proper dozen when a bulging paper bag of these lovable left-asides can be had for just $1 - provided you show up at exactly the right moment, which arrives only once or twice each morning when the bag is full?