Horse Clams (NSFW?)

So about a day after I set foot back in Seattle I got a message from a friend saying that it was going to be at least a minus 2.0 tide. It was Memorial Day. I was on Bainbridge Island and I didn't really have anything going. So I went online, found a beach and bought a shellfish license (along with the complete salt/fresh/dungeness license). Grabbed boots, shovel and bucket and within the hour was out on the lovely and sunny tideflats at Fay Bainbridge State Park.

Perhaps I should preface this by stating I had never been clamming and had no idea what I was doing. So I just went to the waterline and began digging at holes. I was aiming for geoducks but I kept pulling up Horse Clams. These guys aren't geoducks, they're their smaller cousin. But they only bury themselves about a foot and a half down, not three feet. So In no time I had my limit. (Seven) As you can see I hit more than a few of their shells in my frantic and amateurish shovelling. I don't have any pictures, which is a bit of a shame, but I also dropped my cellphone in the tideflats so it's probably best that I left the camera at home. I spent some more time and got a few small clams, but I decided the monster horse clams were probably enough.

Which is good. Because while shellfishing seasons are regulated by the WA Department of Fish and Wildlife, shellfish safety is regulated by the Department of Health. And though they crosslink a bit, they don't really talk to each other. So while Fay Bainbridge is open to clamming by the WDFW, it is closed to Butter clams by the DOH. But you wouldn't know that from the WDFW website. Grrrr. Thanks a lot for the paralytic shellfish poisoning risk.

So I took them home and let them purge for a while. Then set about trying to clean them. Here the horror began.

It turns out that Horse clams often have symbiotic little Pea crabs that live inside them. Which I discovered when some crustacean legs shot out of the shelled clam ("Sweet Jesus!") and a crab proceded to poke its head out, Alien style, from my clam.

At this point finesse went out the window and I began to just hack away anything that didn't look like food. A clam or two later I tried a 10 second blanch in boiling water, which made the whole process easier (especially skinning the siphon).

Here's where the NSFW begins.

Hurr Hurr.

Honestly, grow up.



But I had seven of these suckers and in an hour or so I managed to clean them.

Obviously not all clams are created equal.

Along with the salvageable body parts (mostly aducter muscles) about half of the clams became clam fritters, which were good but nothing to write a blog about. The rest will become chowder sometime soon.