One of the challenges of belonging to a CSA program is to use the bounty that Farmer Kev brings us each week. In Maine, the end of June is still early summer, and the harvest therefore consists of greens, greens, and more greens. Radishes and sugar snap peas are also thrown in, and they certainly add dash to the plethora of greens. When it comes to the peas, my husband, Clif, and I do not have to wonder how to use those beauties. We are crazy about them, and in grocery stores sugar snaps—never mind organic ones like Farmer Kev’s—are quite expensive. Into stir-fries, pasta, and wraps the sugar snaps go, delicious to the very last crunch. Radishes keep well in a bowl of cold water in the refrigerator, and my husband, Clif, and I love to add them to salads.

But what about all those greens? Bags and bags of spinach and lettuce? Swiss chard and beet greens.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, Clif and I are not all that keen on plain cooked greens. We like them in salads, and we don’t mind them as part of a dish. Every night, therefore, we have been eating big green salads, but they do not use a sufficient amount to deal with the many bags of spinach and lettuce we have in our refrigerator.

I have therefore developed a two-pronged approach. The first is to cook with some of the greens—a bag of spinach will shrink to nothing once it is sautéd in a bit of oil. Last week I made spinach with pasta, and I was only moderately pleased with the results. This week, I had another idea. At the Winthrop Farmer’s market, I had bought some garlic sausage from Wholesome Holmstead. I thought, why not make a garlic sausage and spinach dish? And, why not make a sweet and sour sauce, which both Clif and I love, to mix in with the sausage and spinach? How would that taste? I’m inclined to think that sweet and sour sauce, if it’s homemade, improves the taste of almost anything. All right. Maybe not quiche, but sweet and sour sauce sure is good in stir-fries and on chicken and even with white beans and rice. Still, I’ve been cooking long enough to realize that what the imagination conceives might not match reality. (In fact, this is true of a lot of things.)

I am pleased to report that in this case, imagination and reality were in perfect accord. The sausage and spinach with sweet and sour sauce tasted exactly the way I hoped it would. The spinach and the spicy sausage were a perfect pairing with the sweet and sour sauce. We ate it over rice, of course, and not going back for seconds took tremendous willpower. Good thing a big green salad was waiting for me. And, yes, there was spinach in it.

Clif’s response to the sausage and spinach dish? “Pretty good,” he said. And since Clif comes from a long line of Yankees, this is his version of high praise.

My second approach with the surplus is to give some of it away. This week, I brought Swiss chard and beet greens to my friend Lee Gilman, who lives up the road from me. She was happy to receive the greens, and I even threw in a bunch of radishes, since Farmer Kev had given me two bunches this week.

As I drove to deliver the greens and radishes to Lee, black clouds scudded across the sky. The water on the Narrows Ponds, upper and lower, was dark and choppy, and thunder rumbled close by. Keeping an eye on the sky, I spoke with Lee for a bit, and her Sheltie, Lucky, watched us in the bright way that Shelties have. Lee had come in from her own garden, and she was holding a hoe. As we said our goodbyes, Lee moved the hoe back and forth, and with a happy growl, Lucky chased it. Home I went, getting inside just as the rain poured down, making it too wet for Clif to mow the lawn. Ah, well. At least he could get the spinach ready for cooking.

Sausage and Spinach in a Sweet and Sour Sauce

This is more of a guideline than a recipe. Unfortunately, I cannot share the sweet and sour sauce recipe, as it comes directly from a cookbook, and I make it pretty much the way it is written. However, there are many recipes online and in cookbooks. I will tell you the ingredients of the one I use: sugar, cider vinegar, pineapple juice, ketchup, and garlic powder, something I rarely use but is somehow perfect in this recipe. Then, I boil the mixture and thicken it with water and corn starch. Now, at least, you have something to go by.

For last night’s dish, I used 7 ounces of garlic sausage. Any sausage would be good, but that garlic sausage was outstanding, perfectly spiced and with just the right amount of fat. As with any dish, the better the ingredients, the better the results. Not putting any oil in the frying pan, I stir-fried the sausage, which came in a solid pack rather than in links. By the time I was done, I had nice little chunks.

When the sausage was cooked, I added a bunch of spinach. No, I did not measure. I just threw it in until it seemed like enough. (It was.)

Ditto for chunks of pineapple, from a 20 ounce can. Last came the sweet and sour sauce, and I used the entire batch. A pound of meat and more spinach would take a double batch.

While I was cooking the sausage and spinach, I had a pot of jasmine Thai rice simmering on the back burner. Brown rice is better for you, I know, but I can’t help it. I am just crazy about jasmine Thai rice, and that is what we eat in our house.

When the pineapples were heated through, the mixture was spooned over rice.

Time for dinner.

I have a confession to make. Spinach is not one of my favorite foods. In fact, the same could be said for all kinds of greens, ranging from Swiss chard to beet greens. Perhaps it’s because my introduction to them came from parents whose idea of cooking greens was to boil them to a slimy, green pulp, which was then smothered with vinegar. Back in the old days, when I was a child, you had to eat what was on your plate, so mostly I ate those greens. Sometimes, if dinner consisted of too many things I didn’t like, I would ask to eat in the living room. I would insist that there was some special show or movie I just had to watch. I couldn’t do this very often because I knew my mother would become suspicious and would deny permission. So I saved it for a night, say, when a clump of spinach would be served with a casserole made with Veg-All, cream of mushroom soup, ground beef, and macaroni. (Not all of Mom’s cooking was like this. She was a great baker, and her cookies, cakes, and pies, all made from scratch, were delicious.)

Safely ensconced in the living room, too far from the kitchen to be seen, I could sneak food to our dog, Frisky, who was right by my side. I’d eat some of my meal, of course, but well over half would go to Frisky, who thought boiled spinach and Veg-All casserole were just dandy.

Over the years, my stance toward spinach has softened. (However, my take on Veg-All casserole remains unchanged.) I like spinach in quiche or lasagna or any number of dishes, and I have come to love spinach salads, especially if bacon and hard-boiled eggs are involved.

It’s a good thing my attitude toward spinach has changed because in the span of two weeks, Farmer Kev has delivered three big bags of spinach. As of today, we have gone through nearly two of them, mostly munching our way through salads.

Last night, I decided to sauté some of that spinach with garlic and have it with pasta. I looked on the Internet for suggestions and discovered that other than using lots of garlic, there wasn’t much to it. While a pound of penne was cooking—I always make too much—I chopped three cloves of garlic and removed the stems from half a pound of spinach. In a big frying pan, I sautéd the garlic for a minute or so, added the spinach, and stirred it around until the greens were wilted. Then, I added enough of the cooked penne—probably half—until I thought there was a good ratio of pasta to spinach. I tasted it. Not bad, but a little bland. I added a tablespoon of chopped, fresh oregano and a bit of pasta water I had reserved before draining the penne. Better.

My husband, Clif, is not exactly a spinach enthusiast, either, and while he made a comment about how the spicing “wasn’t exactly right,” he went back for a second helping. I thought the dish was good enough, but I certainly wouldn’t serve it to company. Because Clif had a point—the spinach and pasta was still a little bland, even with the addition of the oregano. What would make it better? Lemon juice? Feta cheese? Chickpeas? All of the above? Any suggestions, readers?

For some inexplicable reason, my husband, Clif, and I have been latecomers to bean burgers. Who knows why? Even good eaters get stuck in a rut, and I think that’s where we were when our evening meals revolved around meat. Now that we are mostly vegetarian, our evening meals are centered on vegetables and legumes, and it has forced us to branch out with our eating. This has been a very good thing, and one of the ways we have branched out is with the various bean burgers. While we might have been slow to add them to our food repertoire, we are now making up for lost time. Clif and I have become bean burger enthusiasts, and they have become a regular part of our diet.

A challenge for me, as it is with many recipes, has been to substitute garlic for onion and add other flavorings so that the burger is not boring. (In a recent post, I wrote about the problems my digestive system has with onions and my quest to find flavorful alternatives.) Last night, instead of using a can of spiced black beans, I decided to use some plain black beans that I had cooked, and using Mark Bittman’s bean burger recipe as a guideline, I added various things to pep up the burgers, including garlic, chili powder, and cheddar cheese. I would have loved to add cilantro, but unlike basil, in our supermarkets cilantro is not sold in big bags for a reasonable price. Unless we are having company, I just can’t bring myself to buy those expensive little containers of herbs. So no cilantro, but it would have been a happy addition.

The results? Clif had to talk himself out of having a second burger, and a good thing, too. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have had enough for leftovers, and he certainly didn’t need a second burger. But the larger point is that Clif, who can eat onions, thought these burgers were so good that he wanted seconds. So, success!

As noted in the chickpea burger recipe, one recipe makes four burgers. I cook them all at once, and the beauty of these burgers, whether they are made with chickpeas or black beans, is that they reheat beautifully just the way they are cooked the first time—with a bit of oil in a frying pan.

Our next challenge will be to see how the bean burgers do on the grill. Will they fall apart? How much oil will they need? How long will it take to sizzle them? We are a having a Fourth of July gathering here, and as two of the guests don’t eat meat, I plan to make some of the chickpea patties.

“We’ll need to have a dry run, don’t you think?” I asked Clif.

“Definitely,” he answered.

Next week, then, it will be chickpea burgers on the grill.

In the interim, we have leftover black bean burgers to look forward to.

Black Bean Burgers
Makes 4 patties

2 cups of cooked black beans
2 small cloves or 1 large clove of garlic
1 tablespoon of chili powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
pepper to taste
1/2 cup of cheddar cheese, grated
1/2 cup of rolled oats
1 egg
Oil for frying

In a food processor, combine all the ingredients except the oil. Pulse until the ingredients are mixed but there are still some chunks of bean left. You want a combination of smooth and chunky. If the mixture is too dry, add a little water. (I have not had to do this.) Form the mixture into 4 patties, put on a plate, and chill for an hour or so. This will make the burgers easier to handle.

Heat the oil in a frying pan. When the oil is hot, add the patties and cook for 5 minutes on one side. Flip, and cook for 5 minutes on the other side or until the burger is nicely browned.

Use whatever condiments you would use on a burger. I like dill pickle chips. My husband, Clif, favors jalapeños. Salsa would also be good on black bean burgers. Ketchup. Mayonnaise. There really are no wrong choices.

I have a culinary problem that causes me much anguish. I have alluded to it in past posts, and the time has come to address it directly. So here it is: My digestive system will not tolerate onions unless they have been cooked to smithereens. And I mean smithereens. In stews or a chili where the onions have been simmered for hours and hours, I seldom have a problem. If the onion is chopped very fine and cooked fairly well and there is not too much of it, I’ll only have slight indigestion. (In such dishes—like the fish chowder at the Congo Church—I will indulge from time to time, knowing I’ll have to hit the baking soda and water as soon as I get home.) But if I eat something that has big chunks of not very well cooked onions, then I know I am headed for trouble—multiple doses of baking soda and water followed by Tagamet. And raw onions? Forget about it.

To say this puts a damper on my cooking and eating is an understatement. Onions provide a flavor and depth that when missing can make a dish seem blah and boring. In addition, it is often difficult when going out to eat to find items on the menu that don’t have onions, and dining at friends’ houses can be downright problematic. I was brought up to eat what was in front of me and to say thank you very much. So what do I do? Confess that I have an onion disability? Stay silent, pray that none of the dishes are laden with raw or lightly-cooked onions, and eat what is served? I have done both, and neither approach seems satisfactory. The first approach seems rude—what I have, after all, is an intolerance not a full-blown allergy—and the second approach can lead to misery, even though my affliction is only an intolerance. I long for a third way, which would be to eat the darned things and to suffer no ill effects. However, at my age, I know this is unlikely and that I have to stiver through as best I can.

This brings me to my own cooking, and, in a round-about way, to a recipe for chickpea burgers. First, and I thank the gods for this on a regular basis, I am able to eat garlic. (Raw garlic can be as problematic as onions, but as long as it is lightly cooked, I am fine.) Second, and this is probably why I love Italian food so much, many dishes, especially pasta, can be made using garlic rather than onion. According to Mark Bittman, there is even a notion among some Italian cooks that no dish should include both onion and garlic. (He does not subscribe to this notion.) Finally, I have come to realize that as long as a dish is flavorful, the lack of onion will not be such a problem.

Obviously, then, garlic is one of my prime substitutions for onion, but there are also other flavorings that will jazz up a meal—fresh herbs and a bit of cheese can really make a difference, and I use both in the following recipe for chickpea burgers. This recipe has been adapted from one of Mark Bittman’s in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. His recipe called for onion, for which I substituted one clove of garlic. Then, following some of his suggestions for flavoring bean burgers, I added fresh basil and some grated sharp cheddar. The results were all that I could have hoped for—a veggie burger that was full of flavor, so good, in fact, that these burgers will be a regular part of our diet. The garlic, the chickpeas, the basil, and the cheese all come together to produce a terrific Mediterranean taste. Thus far, we have only pan fried the burgers, but we are looking forward to grilling them, too. Another nice feature is that a single recipe makes four patties that can all be cooked at the same time. The leftovers reheat beautifully in the same way they are originally cooked—in a frying pan with a bit of oil.

Before giving this recipe, I want to note that although fresh basil can be expensive, there is no substitute for it. Dried basil just isn’t worth it. At many grocery stores, large packs of fresh basil are available at a fairly reasonable price. The big pack I picked up at Trader Joe’s was about $2.50, and I have seen similar prices at our local Hannaford. And for those who can’t find big packs of basil at a good price, take heart. Summer and farmers’ markets are coming, and for cooks who have a bit of sunny space in their yards, basil can planted in pots as well as in the garden.

Chickpea Burgers
Makes 4 large patties

2 cups of cooked chickpeas
1/2 cup of whole basil leaves
1 clove of garlic
1/2 teaspoon of salt
Pepper to taste
1/2 cup of rolled oats
1 egg
1/2 cup of sharp cheddar, grated
Olive oil for frying

In my above preamble, I forgot to mention how easy it is to make these burgers. You do need a food processor, which, in my opinion, is an indispensable piece of equipment in a home cook’s kitchen. Food processors don’t even have to be expensive to work well. Ours was cheap, and we have gotten many years of use out of it.  (And it’s still going strong.)

Put all ingredients, except for the oil, in a food processor. You don’t have to chop the basil or the garlic. The food processor will take care of that for you. (You do, of course, have to grate the cheese before adding it to the food processor.) Pulse this mixture until it is fairly well chopped and combined but not totally smooth. There should be rough chunks in the mixture. If the mixture seems too dry, add a bit of water. (I haven’t had to do this.)

Form the mixture into four patties, and chill for an hour in the refrigerator if you have time. Even after chilling, they will be a little crumbly, but they will hold together in the pan. Heat the oil in the frying pan, and when it is hot, add the patties, cooking on one side for five minutes. Flip carefully, and cook on the other side until brown and crispy, about five minutes, maybe a little less if the pan is hot.

Serve on a bun, and any of the toppings you would use on a meat burger would be good on this one as well. Lettuce, tomato, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and, yes, even a slice of onion if you don’t have a touchy digestive system.

After a long wet, rainy May, we had the warmest, sunniest, most-perfect Memorial Day that I can remember. The weather was hot but not stifling, and there was nary a dark cloud to dampen our day. For the most part, the dratted black flies were gone (and good riddance!), and the mosquitoes didn’t come out until dusk. This meant my husband, Clif, and I could spend the whole glorious afternoon on our patio, and we were joined by our daughter Shannon and her husband, Mike, for the first barbecue of the season.

At our house, barbecues follow a certain ritual. First comes the appetizer. We try not to go overboard on this, knowing that more food, lots more food, will follow. Yesterday we kept it simple with chips and salsa and a pitcher of margaritas to toast not only the beginning of summer but also those who have passed away and are very much missed.

Next comes grilled bread, which has become one of our specialties. So much so that guests actually request grilled bread when we invite them for a barbecue. Clif has become a master at stretching the dough, rolling it, flipping it, and making sure it doesn’t burn. A little olive oil for dipping, and you have yourself a pretty good treat. We take the easy way out—buying pizza dough from our local Hannaford—but ambitious cooks could certainly make their own. Perhaps one day I will. Regardless of whether the dough is made from scratch or purchased at a grocery, grilled bread wows most guests at pennies per serving. Now, how often does that happen?

After the bread has been dipped and eaten, we move on to the main meal. For this Memorial Day, we went traditional—grilled chicken, steamed corn, and the best-ever potato salad. (Yes, a recipe will follow.) There are three elements that make this potato salad especially good—bacon, sour cream, and, most important, the hot potatoes are marinated with a vinaigrette. The resulting potato salad is so flavorful that it really doesn’t need onions, although they certainly could be added. As raw onions do not agree with me, this is a real plus in my books.

It is our habit to linger over the main meal until the citronella torches must be lit, dampness settles over the backyard, and, finally, the mosquitoes come out. Then in we go for tea and dessert. Shannon made chocolate thumb-print cookies, which she filled with a cream-cheese mixture and topped with chopped strawberries. A delectable ending to a splendid Memorial Day.

Best-Ever Potato Salad
Adapted from a recipe given to me by my friend Dawna Leavitt

7 medium potatoes
1/3 cup of vinaigrette or Italian dressing
4 or 5 hard boiled eggs, chopped
1/2 pound of bacon, cooked and crumbled
3/4 cup of sour cream, or to taste
1 tablespoon of mayonnaise, or to taste
Salt and pepper to taste

Peel and cut potatoes in quarters. In a large stock pan, boil the potatoes until tender. As soon as the potatoes are done, chop them into bite-sized pieces, put them in a mixing bowl, and pour the vinaigrette or Italian dressing over the still-hot potatoes. Put the bowl in the refrigerator and let marinate a few hours, at least until the potatoes are cold.

When the potatoes are nice and chilled, add the chopped eggs, the crumbled bacon, the sour cream, the mayonnaise, and the salt and pepper. Mix well, put in a pretty serving dish, and ideally chill a bit more so that the flavors will mix. However, if you are pressed for time, the potato salad could be served immediately.

Full disclosure: I do not measure the sour cream or the mayonnaise. I add a bit of sour cream and then mayonnaise until I get a consistency that I like.

Also, 3/4 cup of chopped celery could be added, and for those who love onions, 1/3 cup or so of chopped onions. Parsley might be nice, too, but I never do. I just stick with the basics, and even onion lovers have requested this recipe.

We have had such a spell of wet, cool weather that many of us are wondering what this summer will be like. Is this a sign of things to come? We sure hope not. Etched in our memories is the summer when it seemed as though it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, and blight struck the tomatoes hard. A summer with no fresh tomatoes is a miserable summer. Their reign of glory is brief but oh so welcome. In Maine, we do have greenhouse tomatoes from Backyard Farms in Madison. They’re not bad—better than what is usually found in grocery stores when tomatoes aren’t in season—but greenhouse tomatoes certainly can’t compete with tomatoes grown outside in the good earth.

This weekend, between showers, my husband, Clif, and I managed to go to the transfer station, where we could dump brush into a giant pile waiting to be composted as well as pick up some of the rich, black humus from a pile that has been composted. Unfortunately, because of all the rain, that area was a mud pit, and we couldn’t park too close to the compost. This meant slogging through the mud with our heavy, compost-filled garbage cans. What fun we had! We were just grateful that it didn’t start pouring until we had returned home, taken the garbage cans from the car, and cleaned the muddy mess left behind in the car boot. We gardeners certainly live on the edge.

However, all was not doom and gloom this weekend. On Saturday, our friends Jim and Dawna Leavitt invited us over for dinner, and they served us grilled wild salmon with a white sauce and chopped egg. I will admit that this is the first time I have had this traditional Yankee dish, and I am also not ashamed to admit that I loved it. Really, I could have lapped the plate. The moderately strong taste of the salmon blended so well with the white sauce and the eggs. A milder fish, such as haddock, would have needed some cheese in that sauce, but not the salmon. Just thinking about the salmon with white sauce and eggs makes me want more, and it was certainly the best meal we had all week.

Then, on Sunday, our friends Kate and Bob Johnson stopped by for a visit. I was able to lure them to Pete’s Roast Beef for the incredible roast beef sandwiches, but I also wanted to make a little something to serve at home with tea. My daughter Shannon is a big fan of frozen puff pastry, and it is very good indeed. For some reason, I had never used any, but I just so happened to have a box in my freezer. I also had apples in the refrigerator, brown sugar, and cinnamon. In other words, the fixings for a dessert that was not only simple to make but tasty as well. From finish to end, which included 40 minutes to thaw the dough, this dessert was made in about an hour’s time, with 10 minutes devoted to slicing the apples, mixing them with sugar, and arranging them on the puff pastry. If there is an easier, more delicious dessert, then I haven’t had it.

Apple tart with puff pastry

1 sheet of frozen puff pastry
4 small apples, or 3 medium, cored and sliced very thin
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
A pinch of salt

Remove one sheet of puff pastry from the box, and, without unfolding, let it thaw on the counter for 40 minutes. While the puff pastry is thawing, core and slice—as thin as you can—the apples and place them in a mixing bowl. Combine the sugar, cinnamon, and salt and mix with the apples. Do this enough in advance so that the apples and brown sugar can sit for a bit so that apples are really coated with the sugar. When the puff pastry has thawed, unfold and cut it in half the long way. Put the two halves on a parchment-lined cookie sheet, and arrange the apple slices so that they overlap and leave a nice edge. Bake in a preheated 425° oven for 18 to 20 minutes. Serve with either whipped cream or ice cream. While serving this type of dessert warm is always best, the apple tart is perfectly good served cold as well.

A few nights ago, I decided to make a spaghetti sauce. The way my husband, Clif, and I like spaghetti sauce best is with bits of sausage, cooked in little balls, thrown into the sauce to simmer right along with it. However, as I have indicated in previous posts, for environmental reasons, we have decided to eat “mostly vegetarian,” and what this pretty much means is that we are meatless during the week, saving special meat treats for the weekend (e.g., Pete’s Roast Beef sandwiches).

So for our midweek meal of sauce and pasta, we wondered if we could substitute TVP (textured vegetable protein) for the sausage and get a pleasing albeit different result. Would TVP give the sauce that extra little kick that sausage gives it? After all, although the name sounds a little sterile and scientific, TVP is really just defatted soy flour. Nothing objectionable there, and both Clif and I tend to like all things soy, even tofu, if it’s prepared the right way.

Unfortunately, the TVP did not deliver. We used the chunks, letting them simmer with the sauce, and although it would be unfair to say that the TVP ruined the sauce, it certainly didn’t add anything, either. The texture—a bit on the squishy side—was acceptable, but the taste was, well, blah. The TVP picked up some of the sauce taste, but not enough to make it delectable. And, readers, I’m afraid it did look as though I had thrown a couple of handfuls of dog kibbles into the sauce.

With the taste of TVP being blah and the looks being like dog food, my vote would be to go with just a plain tomato sauce and say to heck with the TVP. Clif, I think, liked it better than I did; he enjoyed the added texture. However, he is fine with a plain tomato sauce, and that is what I will be making during the week.

For weekends or for company, I would get the above-mentioned sausage. If I wanted a bang-up sauce, I might even add some shrimp as well, at the very last minute, of course, so that it wouldn’t overcook.

I am happy to report that despite the dog-food appearance of the TVP, the sauce itself was so good and so simple that it’s worth sharing.

Simple Spaghetti Sauce

1 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes with basil
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 sweet red pepper, chopped
2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 tablespoons of red wine
2 pinches of crushed red pepper, or to taste

In a large frying pan, sauté the red peppers a few minutes until they are slightly soft. Add the garlic and sauté for about a minute. Don’t let the garlic burn! Immediately add the crushed tomatoes, the red wine, and the crushed red pepper. (It was at this point that I added a couple of handfuls of TVP.) Let the sauce simmer for at least 45 minutes so that all the flavors mingle.

For a very special sauce, add cooked sausage (I like mine rolled in little balls) to the sauce before letting it simmer. For an extra-special sauce, also throw in some shrimp at the very last minute, and let the mixture simmer only long enough for the shrimp to be warmed through. You might have to test a shrimp or two, just to be sure. (One of the perks of being the cook.)

Note about the wine: Use the best quality you can afford. A poor-quality wine will make an inferior-tasting sauce.

I just finished reading Joan Reardon’s As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto. The book is fascinating on many, many levels—food, politics, women’s issues, the nature of friendship, and how even great people need a helping hand. But I will be going into this in a future post. In fact, I am planning on writing an honest-to-God book review, something I haven’t done for quite a while.

But for this post, I want to delve into clam chowder or clam bisque or whatever you want to call it. I got the idea from one of Avis DeVoto’s letters, dated January 9, 1953. (Please keep in mind that this is way before Julia Child became JULIA CHILD. Mastering the Art of French Cooking would be published in the early 1960s.) DeVoto, an editor as well as a dedicated home cook wrote, “A firm called Snow is canning minced clams and they are absolutely wonderful. (Send you a sample?) Add thin cream, butter, freshly ground black pepper and you have the most wonderful bisque, strong of clams.”

This started me thinking about clam bisque. In fact, this made me want to eat clam bisque. As a Mainer, I know very well that fresh, steamed clams make the best bisque or chowder. But let’s face it, in the everyday scheme of things, we don’t always have the time or the energy to steam and shuck clams and then clean up the mess. So I asked myself, could I make decent clam bisque using canned clams, as Avis DeVoto suggested?

I decided to find out. At first, I was going to do exactly as DeVotto did, using only clams, light cream, butter, and pepper. But I wanted a little more. In my imagination, the bisque had potatoes. It also had more to flavor it than pepper. Perhaps sherry and Worcestershire sauce.

Next came the second challenge. Onions are commonly used in chowder. I love the taste they bring to chowder, but unfortunately onions don’t agree with me unless they are very well cooked. (A terrible handicap for a foodie, and a subject that will be explored in some later post.)

Fortunately, my digestive system can handle garlic. Could garlic be substituted for onion? Would the bisque still be flavorful?

With two challenges in mind—canned clams rather than fresh and garlic rather than onion—I poked around the Internet for a clam bisque recipe, and I found one on Epicurious to use as a guideline. I added this, I took away that, and the results were just what I had hoped for—rich and flavorful. Really, even with the canned clams, this bisque is good enough to serve as a first course to guests or to make as a meal for a light supper.

My husband, Clif, concurred, and we slurped every bit of the chowder. I only made enough for one meal. Without a husband like Clif, this recipe might serve three or four people, depending on serving size. So if you have hearty eaters or are feeding four or more people, this recipe should definitely be doubled. Also, next time, I’m going to try using a can of whole clams along with a can of minced clams, just to see what the texture is like.

With the butter and cream, this is obviously a very rich dish and one I will only make occasionally. But in Maine, March and the beginning of April are dreary beyond words, and sometimes what is needed is a nice, rich bisque to perk things up.

Clam Bisque

2 (6.5 oz) cans of minced clams, juices reserved
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon of butter
1 tablespoon of flour
½ bay leaf
½ teaspoon thyme leaves, chopped (See note below)
3 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
1 ½ cups of half and half
2 tablespoons of dry sherry, or to taste
Salt, to taste (With the clam juice, little should be needed.)
Freshly ground pepper, to taste
Tabasco sauce, to taste
Worcestershire sauce, to taste

Place the reserved clam juice in a two-cup measuring cup. You want to have 1½ cups of liquid. You won’t have quite enough clam juice, but it will be close. I added a bit of water to the clam juice so that I would have 1 ½ cups of liquid.

In a medium-sized saucepan, melt the butter, add the garlic and flour and stir until it’s a little bubbly, a minute or two. Whisk in the clam juice/water mixture, bring to a simmer, and cook for five minutes, stirring occasionally. The clam juice/water should have the consistency of heavy cream. Add a little water if the mixture is too thick. Add the bay leaf and thyme, then the potatoes. Simmer until tender, about ten or fifteen minutes.

When the potatoes are nearly cooked, place the clams and cream in another saucepan, and bring to a gentle simmer, for about five minutes, until the clams are thoroughly heated.

When the potatoes are tender, add the cream and clams to the soup base. Simmer for 1 or 2 minutes or until the bisque is as hot as you like it. (Don’t bring to a full boil.)

Stir in the sherry, and season to taste with salt, pepper, Tabasco, and Worcestershire sauce.

Need I add that plenty of saltine crackers should be served with the bisque? Not really, but reminders never hurt.

And, as Julia Child would say, bon appétit!

Note about the thyme: I debated as to whether I should use fresh thyme, which is obviously superior to dried thyme. But, oh the price of herbs in those little plastic containers. Then, on top of this, the herbs are not always as fresh as they should be. So I used ¼ teaspoon of dried thyme, and although I thought the bisque was good enough for company, it seemed to me that the dried thyme was the least successful part of this recipe’s adaptation—there was just a touch of bitterness. You might want to spring for fresh thyme. Next time, I am considering trying a bit of dried tarragon, to see if it is more satisfactory than dried thyme.

I’ll keep you posted.

Addendum: The dried tarragon was indeed more satisfactory than the dried thyme, and the whole clams gave the bisque better texture.