Clam fan

If America can be associated with one shellfish more than any other, it must surely be the clam. I know that New England is supposedly the home of the clambake, but you can’t go far in any state without meeting clams in some form — raw in the shell, clam chowder, clam juice or that irresistible Clamato juice, of which there is far too little sold in this country. In Utah earlier this month (for the skiing, not the Mormons), I had a delicious dish of steamed clams in a thin saffron sauce with coriander leaves, and on another occasion, after a glorious day in the mountains, a thick clam chowder with potato and bacon was served after three different sorts of oyster and before three varieties of crab — Alaskan King, Snow and Dungeness. Let no one say that you can’t eat well in middle America.

It is not only the Americans who give their clams odd names — quahog, pismo, geoduck, littleneck.