A Trip to the Belmar Seafood Festival

The gang and I spent this past Sunday afternoon at the 26th Annual Belmar Seafood Festival.  It was a great time dampened only a little bit by the heat and the huge crowds.  One of the perks of living at the Shore is to be able to jump in the car and drive to a festival like in just few minutes.  There is music, craft and other non-food fenders, and a giant wine and beer tent, but of course the real draw is seafood.

Some of my favorite Belmar area seafood restaurants were there including Mr. Shrimp (my current favorite) and Ollie Klein's (the fish I grew up on when the owner was the chef at Evelyn's which has sadly departed from the Belmar restaurant scene.)  There were some higher end representatives including Mumfords, 40 North Oyster Company and Anthony's of Little Italy.  However at an event like this, the key is to eat seafood you love in as close to it's natural state as possible.  The highlight of my eating adventures was a platter of 4 cherrystone clams and 4 nice plum oysters.  What made it taste even better is that this delectable plate of raw mollusks cost me only 5 bucks. It was pretty impressed with the shuckers.  The guy who was preparing my plate told me that he shucks about 2000 briny packets a day.

Nick joined me in his own feast of raw mollusks.  Bria chose a platter of seared tuna, coconut shrimp with a side of rice and arugla. Becca had a crab cake sandwich and a buffalo shrimp taco.  Christine enjoyed a New Jersey speciality, deep fried crunchy soft shell crab on a sandwich with lettuce and tarter sauce.

There were some great choices for deserts if you were interested.  Nick opted for a deep fried oreo which was shared among the group.  Becca had a crape folded over a ricotta and chocolate chip filling.  For me, being the frugal guy that I am, I was thrilled that 7 Eleven had a truck there giving out free, pretty generous samples of slushy.

If you plan to attend the Belmar Seafood Festival next year, I would give you two hints.  Try to go on Friday night.  The attendance is a little lighter and according to one of the worker, this years festival had the largest attendance in it's history, so on the last day, crowds were definitely bordering on intolerable. The second hint is to park in at the Marina or train station and use the free shuttles provided by the festival.  I am looking forward to enjoying some of the other great foodie and fun festivals this summer.  It's great to live at the Jersey Shore.  Enjoy!

My Original and Delicious Manhattan Clam Chowder Recipe

I grew up eating hot and steamy bowls of clam chowder when I was a kid spending my summers at the Jersey Shore. My very first summer job was working at the Sign of the Fish Restaurant on the southend boardwalk in Ocean Grove, NJ. Dave Shotwell and his lovely wife ran it for a couple of summers when he was taking his summer break from directing the marching band at Neptune High School. My official title my first year there was dishwasher, but Mr Shotwell would often use me to do the peeling and chopping for the soups that were a staple of the menu. This is where I learned to love the kitchen and cooking. Mr. Shotwell cooked up a very awesome clam chowder that would sell out in one day. My clam chowder recipe tries to recall the flavors from the Delicious steamy bowl I used to help make back in the day. Of course it's base is a tomato infused clam broth, enriched with bell peppers, potatoes and flavored with a good dose of black pepper and thyme. It is so simple to use fresh clams and so economical, at least in our area, that I can't imagine why anyone would use the canned stuff. Give my recipe a try and let me know what you think.

House Hubbie's Own Manhattan Clam Chowder

12 chowder clams (the size above cherrystones also called quahogs)
1 cup of water

Wash off clams, make sure they all alive, steam in a closed pot until clams are open. Remove clams from pot, when cool remove clam meat from shells, chop and set aside. Strain cooking liquid through paper towel or coffee filter in order to remove sand. Set aside.

4 strips of bacon, diced
1 medium onion
2 stalks celery
4 carrots
2 bell peppers
Salt

Cook bacon in bottom of pot until rendered. Drain off fat and return bacon and 2 T of bacon drippings to pot. Chop vegetables into about a 1/2 inch dice. Season with salt. Sweat veggies in bacon drippings over medium heat until onions are clear.

Clam steaming liquid plus enough bottled clam juice to make six cups.
2 12 oz cans of diced tomatoes
2 bay leaves
1 1/2 t. thyme
freshly ground pepper to taste
3 medium potatoes, peeled and diced.
chopped clams
salt, pepper
fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped
oyster crackers

Add the clam broth and clam juice to the vegetables. Add the tomatoes, by leaves, thyme and pepper. Simmer for about an hour or so. Add the potatoes and cook until they are soft but not mushy and soup has begun to thicken (20 or 30 minutes). Add clams. Cook for another 10 minutes or so. Taste and correct for seasoning with salt and pepper.

Serve chowder in bowls garnished with parsley with oyster crackers on the side.

Enjoy!

Lemon Garlic Shrimp and Bow Ties

There a couple of little tricks to make a great shrimp and pasta dish. First, I always start with raw shrimp with the shells on. The frozen bags of shrimp come in an "easy peel" raw packaging and these are the ones I use. After gently thawing the shrimp, I peel the shrimp and make a stock of the peels by covering them with water and simmering them with parsley, a shallot and a couple of stalks of parsley. The second trick is to use the right cooking technique for the shrimp. The shrimp need to be as dry as possible. Then they should be cooked over high heat in small batches in a small amount of olive oil. If you are not careful to dry the shrimp and cook them quickly they will give off a lot of juice and will boil in their juices. This results in a rubbery and tough shrimp instead of the tender crisp shrimp you are looking for. The shrimp should be cooked on one side until slightly brown, turned over and cooked until just opaque.

With your perfectly cooked shrimp and stock, you can do all kinds of good things. For this dish, I made a sauce from tons of garlic (you can never use to much garlic in my opinion), shallots, stock, fresh lemon juice, crushed red pepper and butter. It tossed some bow tie pasta with the sauce, added the shrimp and served. It was very tasty.

Lemon Garlic Shrimp and Bow Ties

1 package frozen raw "quick peel" shrimp

water
1 shallot, halved
2 stalks of parsley
1 bay leaf
4 pepper corns
1/2 t. salt

2 T olive oil
2 shallots, diced
6 cloves of garlic minced
1/4 t crushed red pepper
3/4 cup shrimp stock
juice from two lemons
2 T butter

1 box fafalle (bow tie) pasta
1/2 cup of the pasta cooking water
2 T chopped parsley
salt and pepper to taste

Thaw the shrimp according to the package directions.

Stock:
Peel shrimp and put peels in a small pot, cover with water, add the shallot, parsley, bay leaf, pepper and salt. Simmer for a half hour or so.

Saute shrimp in small batches in a small amount of olive oil per batch.

Sauce:
In the same pan as the shrimp were sauteed, cook the shallots in a bit of olive oil, then the garlic and crushed red pepper. Add the stock and reduce by half. Add the lemon juice and reduce by half again. Turn off heat and melt butter into the sauce.

Add the cooked pasta to the pan w/ 1/2 cup of the pasta cooking liquid. Cook the pasta in the sauce until the pasta is coated with the sauce. Taste and adjust seasonings. Add the shrimp and the parsley and toss together. Makes 4-5 cook size servings.

Enjoy!

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A Wonderful Oceanfront Anniversary Dinner at McLoone's Pier House, Long Branch, NJ

Christine and I finally got the chance to get away for the evening to celebrate our anniversary. Our anniversary is on July 11th, but we have been so busy that we couldn't find the time to spent a nice evening together until this week. We have been married twenty-seven years. I have a wonderful wife and the years have been very rich. We went to McLoone's Pier House in Long Branch. McCloone's is part of a family of restaurants that began with McLoone's Rum Runner and has continued to grow with McLoone's at Favorites (the OTB parlor in Fords, NJ), and the newly established McLoone's Saltwater Beach Cafe and Tim McLoone's Supper Club in what used to be the Howard Johnson's on the Boardwalk in Asbury Park.

McLoone's is known for putting a contemporary spin on fresh local ingredients with a focus on seafood. The Pier House is located in Pier Village, which is a beautifully redeveloped section of the boardwalk in Long Branch. The style of the Pier House is what I would call casual chic. There are two sections of the restaurant: the deck which caters to beach goers and the indoor restaurant which serves fancier lunches and dinners. One of the best things about the Pier House is its oceanfront location and the dining room, which while in itself is beautiful, is brought to an even higher level by the sweeping ocean views. (The beach picture was taken from our window). The Pier House is one of a handful of restaurants at the Jersey Shore that offers the ambiance of ocean views.
The menu at McCloone's is a creative version of a Jersey Shore seafood and land lubber's menu. While we were waiting for our meal to be served we munched on Italian bread served with a butter, garlic, and herb composition. Being the traditionalists that we are we started our meal with a bucket of steamers. We were served a heaping bucket of steamed soft shell clams, more than enough for two. Along with the bucket we received the expected bowl of clam broth for washing any sand off the clams and a dish of drawn butter. The clams, mostly on the medium to large size, were sweet and cooked perfectly. When steamers are on the menu, it is the dish I use to judge the quality of a seafood restaurant and so far McCloone's was batting 1000.

My wife ordered the Lobster and Shrimp Bisque as her starter. (We shared it). The menu at McLoone's says this is one of their signature dishes and I can see why. The presentation set this dish apart from an ordinary soup. The server brought a dish which is empty except for a pile of diced morsels of shrimp. Then a rich amalgamation of lobster and cream is poured over the shrimp. This dish, with some bread and a salad, would make a substantial and delicious lunch. The menu has some other interesting starters such as lobster wellington, drunken clams, and a spinach and artichoke dip which we observed several tables enjoying. There is a also a raw bar with oysters and cherrystone clams which I hope to enjoy on a future visit.

For her entree Christine ordered Jumbo Sea Scallops. She received four large scallops that were perfectly caramelized and cooked just to the done side of sushi. The scallops were beautifully presented on a plate with julienne vegetables and a pacific seaweed salad. The seaweed salad was quite interesting. It had an unusual but not unpleasant texture. It tasted of the ocean but was not fishy and it was dressed in a toasted sesame dressing which gave it a distinctively Asian flavor.

For my entree I ordered the Lobster Rappa. The dish contained generous chunks of lobster and fresh mozzarella with spinach and a sauce served over linguine then finished with Parmesan cheese. The sauce was made of olive oil, diced tomatoes, onions and garlic. I thoroughly enjoyed this dish, although it could have used a bit more salt and pepper. In addition to these entrees others that seemed interesting were the fisherman's dinner of scallops, shrimp and softshell crab fried in a graham cracker crumb crust. I was also very tempted to order the cowboy steak which was a 14 oz. rib eye steak grilled on the bone.


For desert Christine and I shared one of our favorites, a flourless chocolate cake. The Pier House's version was a rich, dark chocolate cake with a hint of raspberry. It reminded me of a rich, buttery truffle. Our meal at the Pier House was excellent. The only moderately disappointing part of the entire experience was the service. The service staff were mostly college age students. They were warm and friendly but seemed somewhat amateurish and less informed than I expected for a restaurant of the Pier House's caliber. That being said, if you are looking for an excellent ocean front meal at the Jersey Shore, I would not hesitate to recommend McCloone's Pier House.

Enjoy!

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