Maine Clam Bake

The Art of the Clam Bake

Written by Marjorie Kernan

Anyone who’s grown up in coastal New England always has the notion of a clam bake tucked in a corner of his or her mind. It sits there, the perfect image of a summer gathering, until finally it is shaken out of the idea world and into the real one and actually gets planned, layered by now with clam bake lore and one’s own personal knowledge from putting them on in the past. Last summer I mentioned to my husband, Andre, an incredibly talented cook, that it was just about time for another clam bake. I could practically hear his mind ticking as he took the suggestion and ran with it. I could tell he’d really bitten on the idea when he mentioned one morning that he’d figured out the perfect clam-bake venue: the cove in Brooklin, Maine, where our friends Jen and Brad have a tiny 1950s house that harks back to a simple way of Maine summer living that is gradually disappearing.

Jen and Brad loved the idea, and suggested we all do it together as the day-after party for Jen’s father’s birthday, an annual summer event of some magnitude. But, they asked us, were Andre and I really willing to take on twenty-four eaters? The more the better, we said. A proper clam bake is a tribal thing.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the early settlers of New England learned how to do clam bakes from the Native Americans. There’s one basic approach, but warring schools of thought about the particulars, just as there are in barbecue—i.e., the cooking of meats in an outdoor setting by men. When men gather, beers to hand, to observe their host chargrilling, there arises an inevitable dialogue among them regarding the method. “Hey, man, you gotta let the coals bank down a little more,” they’ll say, or, “You better turn that sucker.” I have a name for this phenomenon: the pit crit.

Brad, Andre and Doug volunteered to do the work. A clam bake intended for a largish crowd has to begin in the morning, which means drinking beer throughout the day, another job in itself, just to be precisely sober enough yet well hydrated. There’s lots of water in beer.

The appointed day dawned, sunny and glorious. The boys dug a trench in the sand above the high tide mark. I kept the clams and mussels in an openwork basket in the sea to rinse them with ocean water and keep them fresh, but Maine tides are dramatic and I had to move the basket every fifteen minutes to keep it submerged. Once, I missed the interval and had to track down the shellfish that had escaped from the basket, sort of cheering for the ones that got away. We all gathered flat stones from the beach to line the bottom of the pit, laying them carefully together. Then masses of seaweed were collected before the tide came in and covered it all. We piled it up on a piece of canvas beside the pit. Next we put firewood over the stones and layered it with newspaper to help ignite it.

After these initial preparations we broke for lunch, but I could see the three men eyeing the newspaper-covered wood, aching to set it on fire. Men like fire a whole lot. It calls to their souls. Before I knew it our trio of chefs had given into this urge and the pit was raging, a monster, crackling heat waves rising into the air. They drank beer and stared at the fire, feeding it, talking about what it would take to get it to burn down to a perfect bed of hot coals. If cordwood is expensive in your area, I highly recommend dining out.

At around 4 p.m., the lobsterman who lives next door came in on his boat, waving mightily. Perfect timing. For a group of 24 people he’d brought 40 lobsters, caught that afternoon. Andre went into master chef mode, calling for a thick heap of wet seaweed to be layered over the coals, followed by the lobsters, a bunch of potatoes tied together with string, another layer of seaweed, the rest of the potatoes, the steamers and mussels, another layer of seaweed, the ears of corn and eggplants and bell peppers, a final mound of seaweed, and at long last an ancient heavy-cotton tarp (if you’ve got one in your garage, don’t throw it out!).

Now the cocktail hour could begin since the guests arrived, and everyone was relaxed, looking forward to the feast and a bunch of us headed out into the cove for a swim. There’s nothing more wonderful than chatting and having a glass of wine and then carrying on with the conversation in the sea.

Jen had thought about setting up a huge outdoor dining table but I’d said forget it. At a clam bake everyone just hunkers down on the grass or on a stump or at most on a bench. Napkins aren’t even particularly helpful. And so that’s what we did, helping ourselves to the piles of seafood and veggies, wiping our fingers on the grass and at times falling into near silence as everyone savored the incredibly distinct, smoky, seaweed-infused taste of the dinner. There was plenty of chatter, it was the happiest of evenings, but what really conveyed it were those small silences. As the sun set in delicate colors over Eggomogin Reach, every once in a while someone would let out an involuntary, “Oh, mmm.”

About the author

A former painter, Marjorie Kernan owns an antiques shop on the coast of Maine. The Ballad of West Tenth Street, her first novel, is a contemporary urban fairy tale that delightfully reimagines real life.