Food, Glorious Food

[lsanderson]

In a ’64 T-Bird, Chasing a Date With a Clam
By DAVID LEITE

RECAPTURING a childhood memory is nearly impossible. Chasing after it in a black 1964 Thunderbird convertible with red interior certainly helps.

The memory: lightly fried clams with big, juicy bellies, like the kind I munched on nearly every summer weekend growing up in Swansea, Mass. The car, owned by my friend Bob Pidkameny: a nod to my godfather, a local celebrity and stock car driver, who would pile my two cousins and me into whatever sleek beauty he was tinkering with and take us to Macray’s in Westport, Mass. There we sat — three lard slicks — digging into red-and-white cardboard boxes, while screams from the riders on the Comet, the wooden roller coaster at a nearby amusement park, floated across the highway.

Fried clams are to New England what barbecue is to the South. Like barbecue, the best clams come from small roadside shacks run in pragmatic mom-and-pop style. Flinty Northerners, like their porcine-loving counterparts, can be fanatically loyal to their favorite spots. To eat at any place but Macray’s was considered familial treason when I was growing up — it was Macray’s or nothing, until it was shuttered and we were set adrift.

This summer, in search of the clams of my youth, Bob and I covered more than 625 miles, visited 16 shacks and unashamedly basked in the attention the Thunderbird commanded from Branford, Conn., to Portland, Me., and back. In between rolls of antacid and scoops of ice cream, the unofficial finish to a fried-clam meal, we found that this summertime classic is even more fleeting than the season of its peak popularity.

Storms, public taste, government warnings about saturated fats, even school vacation schedules conspired to keep the clams of my memory mostly out of reach. But every once in a while, fate jiggered events and passed me a pint or two of the luscious, plump-bellied beauties I remember.

To many New Englanders the humble clam, which stars in chowders, clambakes and clam cakes, reaches its quintessence when coated and fried. And ever since July 3, 1916, when Lawrence Woodman, a k a Chubby, the founder of Woodman’s in Essex, Mass., fried a clam in lard normally reserved for his famous potato chips, cooks have been trying to create the perfect fried clam.

But unlike pit masters who rabidly guard their secret sauce recipes, fry cooks are an open book. All work with the same four elements: soft-shell clams, a dipping liquid, a coating and oil. According to almost all the cooks and owners I met the liquid is usually evaporated milk, and the coating is nothing more than some combination of flours: regular, corn or pastry. Most places use canola or soybean oil, which are high in unsaturated fats. Only Woodman’s and Essex Seafood, in Essex, Mass., still fry clams in pure lard.

So why are the clams I dream of so hit-or-miss? More

Edible Films With Superpowers
By KIM SEVERSON

New Brunswick, N.J.

LEAVE heirloom tomatoes to the organic farmers and pork belly to the chefs. In the chemistry department at Rutgers University and other laboratories like it, the real action is in less trendy ingredients like oregano, crab shells and milk.

In a handful of food science labs around the country, people who talk about food in terms of microbes and polymers have been turning the natural pathogen fighters found in everyday food into edible films and powders.

If their work pans out, thin films woven with a thyme derivative that can kill E. coli could line bags of fresh spinach. The same material in powder form might be sprinkled on packages of chicken to stop salmonella.

Strawberries could be dipped in a soup made from egg proteins and shrimp shells. The resulting film — invisible, edible and, ideally, flavorless — would fight mold, kill pathogens and keep the fruit ripe longer.

For average eaters who are still scratching their heads over trans fat, food coated with invisible films that lure bad microorganisms to their death might as well be nuclear fusion. But food scientists believe the potential for using these everyday ingredients to make a safer food supply is huge.

“These natural films are really a very hot topic these days,” said Michael Chikindas, a food scientist working with the team at Rutgers. “The range of applications is endless, from very delicate foods to Army rations and space missions.”

On the most basic level, the films are something like a plastic wrap made of edible components that dissolves in water. The films can be infused with molecules from cloves, thyme or other foods that can keep unhealthy bacteria from growing. They can even be manipulated to carry flavor. More

How to Eat (and Read) Close to Home
By MARIAN BURROS

NO one would ever mistake Edible Brooklyn for Edible Atlanta, though both are quarterly food magazines that share a corporate parent and a typeface. But the story titles in the latest issue of the Brooklyn version might flummox Atlantans. There is, for example, “Fresh Kills,” about a live poultry market in Williamsburg, and “Late Night Nosh,” which is self-explanatory, at least in New York City.

Meanwhile Edible Atlanta provides its readers with recipes for corn pudding and ways to cook kudzu, the bedeviling weed that has taken over the South. That story begins with a joke:

“How do you plant kudzu? You throw it and run.”

That line probably won’t play in Bay Ridge. But do Atlantans know that kudzu, free for the taking, can be substituted for grape leaves, kale or spinach? Or that you can make jelly from kudzu blossoms?

What began five years ago as one publication that tried to tell the citizens of Ojai, Calif., everything they ever wanted to know about the food and wine in their community has turned into a network of 33 Edible magazines across the country. Each of them offers readers culinary news tailored to where they live.

The company is spreading like kudzu, maybe faster. Seven more magazines are coming by the end of the fall, from Aspen to San Diego, not to mention Toronto. Negotiations for 12 others next year are in the works. More

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Small world department: I know Mark Daeschel, one of the researchers quoted in the second piece. The program I work for provided the grant money that got him started in food/film technology.

The cool thing: He wasn't originally looking for a way to enhance food packaging and safety. He was looking for a way to help coastal seafood processors get some value out of something they now throw away (crab and shrimp shells). Since many coastal communities have horrific solid-waste disposal and water quality problems, his work has the potential for a hat trick of win-win-win. (-:

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Edible Brooklyn: Brooklyn still has one farm, carefully preserved. And NYC has an agricultural high school.

Kudzu: the Wedge has kudzu flour (label says "kuzu") from Japan.

A while ago, there was a news story about something in kudzu which might help reduce alcoholism. What the story actually said was that it halved alcohol consumption in one species of lab animal. But what some people read was "No-effort miracle cure for alcoholism!" The Wedge got a lot of calls from people asking if they sold kudzu.

Kewl!

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

It sounds interesting.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

That's very cool.

I know some vegans and Jews who might not be so happy with the final product, though that's the biggest down side I can think of.