Product Description

Stop any Yankee on the street and ask the name of his or her favorite restaurant, and you'll be directed to a Connecticut clam shack . . . or a Maine lobster pound . . . or a Massachusetts chowder house. In these rustic eateries, you find the freshest seafood prepared according to classic, decades-old, family recipes. Mountains of whole-belly fried clams. Steaming bowls of rich, creamy chowder. Sweet lobster boiled in seawater. Fresh, succulent cod fillets fried golden brown.

In THE NEW ENGLAND CLAM SHACK COOKBOOK, author and native New Englander Brooke Dojny presents traditional New England fare as it is served up in 25 classic seafood eateries. With a little cajoling, Dojny managed to get the owners to reveal their recipes for such Yankee favorites as chowder (clear, red, and white), lobster rolls, fried clams, sweet New England crab, broiled mackerel, and garlicky mussels. Then there are the side dishes: perfect cole slaw and onion rings, pickled beets, and red bliss potato salad. Of course, no book on Yankee cuisine would be complete without a chapter on those famous New England desserts - apple crisp, Indian pudding, wild blueberry pie, whoopie pies, and a whole lot more.

Along the way, Dojny weaves together the history of these restaurants with local lore. She profiles fishermen and cooks. She weighs in on the Great New England Seafood Debates: red chowder vs. white chowder vs. clear chowder; batter-fried clams vs. crumb-fried clams. Scattered throughout the book are sidebars that offer practical advice on how to re-create great New England seafood in your own kitchen: the proper way to clean and shuck clams, the basics of frying fish fillets. THE NEW ENGLAND CLAM SHACK COOKBOOK will make you want to drop what you're doing, grab your car keys, and head for the New England coast.<

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #158288 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-03
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Dojny (The New England Cookbook) has created a dependable travel guide for seafood lovers touring the Northeast while simultaneously offering mouthwatering recipes sure to torture those who have no access to fresh seafood or a decent deep fryer. From coastal Connecticut up through Maine, 25 clam shacks, lobster pounds and chowder houses are lovingly mapped, photographed or illustrated, and profiled with their specialty dishes presented for home cooks to take their best shot at. For those who can't make the trip, there are recipes from Two Lights Lobster Shack in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, where the fresh lobster is drizzled in butter and perked with paprika; there is also Roast Bluefish (served at The Place in Guilford, Conn.), which is caught in the Long Island Sound by the same men who immediately grill it over hickory and oak with just a little lemon and butter. Even a Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Tomato gains elite status-served by the Cod End Cookhouse in Maine, done up on bread made of oatmeal and molasses. The book also offers all the tips one would expect on how to eat lobster, shuck oysters, dig clams and fillet a fish. Lessons on regionalism include proper usage of Stuffies (i.e., stuffed clams, or stuffed quahogs, depending on where you are) and a heap of New England Clam Chowder variations, some with salt pork, and a Rhode Island Red Chowder that dares to use tomato. Other fun features include photos of essential local ingredients like Snow's All Natural Clam Juice and Golden Dipt Fry Easy breading.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Brooke Dojny is the author of more than a dozen cookbooks, including Dishing Up Maine, The New England Cookbook, and AMA Family Cookbook, which won the James Beard Award in 1997. She lives year-round on the coast of Maine.

Customer Reviews

Great recipes! Would like to see more from CT restaurants.
This is a great book. So far, we have made the clam chowder from the Seahorse Tavern, and it was superb. Just like the clear chowder I grew up eating. However, aside from two Connecticut restaurants, the author virtually skips over the whole state. There are so many excellent clam shacks and seafood places in CT, and I'm hoping the 2nd edition (set to come out in May 2008) will include more recipes from my former home state. But other than that, no complaints. In addition to great recipes, the book is a lot of fun to read through. The author includes lots of fun facts and anecdotes.

Delicious but deadly food
Just what you might expect. Buttery cholesterol laden food that almost everyone loves! 'They' now tell us now it might kill you, but what the heck? It is a review of reicpes from many roadside eateries in coastal New England. I find much of it repetitive, after all, how many ways are there to deep fry a clam?
If you love this vacation food, it is fun. As a cookbook, it is very limited.
DOC

This book is exactly what I was looking for
Great, fun book for those of us who know and love New England clam shacks. It's fun to read and to look at, brings it all back to you about what fun those places are, and what a vanishing breed, and if you care to make some of the recipes, why they're there as well. Excellent book, in every aspect, and would be a fun gift book or memorabilia from travels to New England. Just love it. Very light-hearted content and lovely visual presentation, but informative as well. Nothing boring here.