Clams by Another Name

After a lovely day at the beach on Sunday, Fork and I emerged from Penn Station wondering what to have for dinner. One look at the long taxi line on 7th Avenue was all we needed to convince us to walk home--via a route that took us past Garden of Eden.

We picked up two dozen Connecticut littleneck clams, some tomatoes, a cucumber, dill and a $1 bag of day-old bread. A stop at the wine shop for a chilled bottle of Albarino (our latest favorite, from Galicia and perfectly crisp) and we were set. On the agenda: the unfortunately-named Gwyneth's Clams. The recipe comes from a road trip Gwyneth Paltrow, Mario Batali and Mark Bittman took through Spain, documented in a TV series, forthcoming book and recent article in Food & Wine. Dirty jokes from Fork notwithstanding, we were kind of psyched to try Gwyneth's clams.

There's not much to the dish: well-scrubbed clams steam open in the wine, with a horizontally halved head of garlic and a couple of bay leaves. Drizzle the opened clams and wine broth with olive oil, and dinner's ready. Before preparing the clams--which took all of 10 minutes--I threw together a tomato/cucumber/dill salad, a classic summer salad my friend Anne taught me years ago.

It probably goes without saying that we wiped this out. The clams were delicious, and you tasted more of their ocean flavor since they were cooked in wine, not butter. Sopping up the broth with the bread (and rubbing it first on the halved garlic head floating around inside the wine) was very enjoyable, too. Aside from the name, this is one of my favorite dishes of the summer.--S

Parachute In for Some Tuna

As I was running laps around a track in Riverside Park tonight, parachute strapped to my waist, sun setting over the Hudson River, I was thinking about tuna.

Sushi-grade ahi tuna. It was pink and fatty. Fork brought it home before I set out on my run, and as I released the parachute for a final lap, feeling its weight disappear as I tore around the track feeling newly lightweight, my stomach started to rumble. TUNA!

I busted into the kitchen, and Fork and I set to frantic work. Within 15 minutes, dinner was on the table and we dug in. The tuna steaks were phenomenal; we lightly coated them in olive oil, salt and pepper, and seared them in a hot frying pan for less than two minutes per side, serving them rare. Fork also picked up more littleneck clams, his latest obsession, which were just as tasty as last week's. And what goes better with tuna than ginger? Instead of masking the tuna's fine flavor, though, we used ginger on the salad, in an emulsified ginger dressing recipe my cousin Kathy gave me years ago.

And for dessert, the ice cream flavor du semaine: Coconut. I prefer this name to the one Mark Bittman gives it in yesterday's Times--Cornstarch Ice Cream. Despite the unappetizing name, this ice cream is one of my favorites yet. It's not as smooth as other ice creams I've made (especially the French-style ones, with eggs), though it lacked the graininess present in many ice creams. Turns out that cornstarch prevents crystal formation--which results in that grainy texture--by soaking up water, so there's less water present to make big crystals. The addition of some toasted coconut at the end of the churning did lend a little texture, though: a pleasant crunch.--S

Summer Clambake

Boy, I woke up with a big one today. A craving that, is. By the time I had my morning coffee I'd decided I wanted scallops for dinner. I went to the fish store at lunchtime, and i knew i was in businesss when the fishmonger smiled at my order. "These are the best scallops I've had all year," he said. I'll say, they were were lovely. The littlenecks caught my eye too, so I picked up a dozen and a summer clambake was born.

Spoon added a loaf of french bread, some corn from the market and a bottle of Pinot Grigio and hit the kitchen to whip up a quick and glorious feast of grilled sea scallops with steamed little neck clams (clam juice on the side, with a dash of fresh mint, great for the french bread). On the side we had a crisp salad of romaine hearts, red onion, fresh corn and bleu cheese and some leftover quinoa. Quinoa is a grain not unlike coucous. Spoon makes a deicious cold quinoa salad with black beans, tomato, green onion and lime juice. For dessert, homemade ice cream: let me hand it over to Spoon...--F

For this week's ice cream installment, I wanted to make some sort of raspberry chocolate ice cream, but by the time I got to the market this evening, every stand was out of raspberries. One stand was selling gooseberries, and after tasting one, I figured I'd try them, not as a substitute, per se, but as an alternate in the Chocolate-Raspberry Ice Cream recipe from The Perfect Scoop.

I'd noticed gooseberries around the market over the past few weeks; they seem to be this year's it fruit. The ones I bought are red, although gooseberries also come in green. They resemble grapes, with little pinstripes running across each one vertically, and taste sweet and tangy. They have prickly tips, which were a little annoying to remove, but I tried to get into the Zen of the activity, which helped.

This Philadelphia-style ice cream calls for cooking heavy cream, sugar and dutch-process cocoa powder on the stove, and then steeping the berries in that mixture, lid on, for 10 minutes. You then puree the concoction, chill it and churn it. The finished product is a rather elegant frozen dessert. Like the blueberry ice cream, this ice cream is best eaten sparingly--one scoop at a time. Take it easy, and, in the words of the ice cream vendor my mom used to buy ice cream from as a kid, "take your tongue for a sleighride!"--S