OH, NANTUCKET!

Nantucket Bay Scallops are presently in season. Don’t blink… and when you see the price, try not to gag.

Andrea and I generally avoid restaurants, which affords us a special treat at home every now and then– things like Wagyu beef, wild striped bass… and, for a fleeting few weeks every autumn, Nantucket Bay Scallops. (Check out Bay Scallops vs. Sea Scallops for a quick and useful primer on scallops in general. For details specific to the Nantuckets, go here.)

What makes Nantucket Bay Scallops so special? First of all, the tiny and very exclusive island of Nantucket has its own substantial caché. Ever hear of a “Nantucket Mink?” That’s the nickname they’ve given to their iconic, locally-made handbag–

The genuine article... $1400 on etsy

Secondly, genuine Nantucket Bay Scallops are only seasonally available, and it’s a very short season. And finally, they are really, really delicious… as they certainly should be for $40-50/lb.

And how should one eat them?

The true connoisseurs eat’em raw, just like freshly-shucked oysters. I first tasted them delicately smoked, which played beautifully with their inherent sweetness. If you are cooking them, remember that simpler is better– avoid heavy-handed preparations; our ultra-rich Coquilles St. Jacques recipe, for instance, is best reserved for sea scallops. Andrea and I enjoyed our Nantuckets very gently sautéed and tossed with a light beurre blanc.

Where can one purchase such a rare treat? Numerous online seafood suppliers are willing to ship directly to your door. Expect to pay ~$50/lb., including shipping. Are they worth it? Considering the current cost of a nice meal in a fancy restaurant, absolutely.

And the perfect wine, you understandably ask? Here’s where you wisely eschew the heavyweight Chardonnays from California and opt for either an elegant French (Burgundian) version or, alternatively, unoaked Sauvignon Blanc or Riesling. (For a thorough delineation of these three “Royal Sisters,” click here.) Of course, a crisp and dry blanc de blancs bubbly works perfectly as well. Our personal choice? The fabulously subtle Sans Oak Chardonnay from our nearby Red Tail Ridge Winery.

MORE ON NANTUCKET

If you love the idea of Nantucket but don't feel like splurging on their namesake scallops, we've co-opted the island's name for a chowder recipe based on a description from chapter 15 of Herman Melville's MOBY DICK--

“...a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the apparently cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends! hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt. Our appetites being sharpened by the frosty voyage, and in particular, Queequeg seeing his favourite fishing food before him, and the chowder being surpassingly excellent, we despatched it with great expedition: when leaning back a moment and bethinking me of Mrs. Hussey’s clam and cod announcement, I thought I would try a little experiment. Stepping to the kitchen door, I uttered the word ‘cod’ with great emphasis, and resumed my seat. In a few moments the savoury steam came forth again, but with a different flavor, and in good time a fine cod-chowder was placed before us.”

So, all we’re doing here is combining the aforementioned two soups into one… and, with arguably cute nomenclature, honoring its source. (Mrs. Hussey's fictitious soup joint, the Try-Pots Inn, was located on Nantucket.)

Nantucket Chowder for 6-8

EQUIPMENT:

Large Pot

Large Frying Pan or Sauce Pan

INGREDIENTS:

2 Pounds or so of Cod Loin, cut into 8 Pieces

1 lb. Container (or more) Chopped Fresh Sea Clams (avoid canned clams)

4-5 oz. Pork Belly, ¼” Dice

4 Medium White Potatoes, ½” Diced and kept in Water

2 Medium Yellow Onions, Chopped

4-6 Medium Stalks of Celery, Chopped

1-2 Bay Leaves

Pinch of Dried Thyme

1 Pint (more or less) Heavy Cream

1 Pint (or more) Clam Juice or Seafood Stock

Clarified Butter (for Sautéing)

Potato Flour (if Needed for Thickening)

Chopped Fresh Flat Leaf Parsley (for garnish)

Add the cod sections to the large saucepan and cover with just enough water. Gently simmer for 12-15 minutes, then carefully remove cod from the water and set aside.

In the large pot, sauté diced pork belly over medium heat with clarified butter. When the pieces begin to crisp, add onions and cook until they are soft and translucent. Then do the same with celery. Add clams, stock, and/or juice and cook for 10 minutes.

Add the potatoes and just enough of their water along with the bay leaf and thyme and simmer until the diced potatoes are sufficiently tender. Remove bay leaves.

Depending on how much thickening is desired, strain off either a little or a lot of liquid into a large saucepan, bring it to a boil, then reduce as needed. Add cream as desired and reduce a little more, carefully enough to avoid boiling over. Want your chowder significantly thicker and still gluten-free? Reach for that potato flour I had you purchase for the hash browns/potato pancake hybrid and make yourself a  roux using potato flour in place of all-purpose (wheat) flour. Whisk this back into the reduced broth & cream mixture, then add THAT back into the large pot of soup. If you want it even thicker, repeat this process. How about richer? Add butter to your heart's content (I'm into irony) and lovingly stir it in. This chowder recipe will readily swallow most of a stick.

Portion chowder into individual bowls and then add cod sections to each serving. They should flake quite easily, which is why we don’t cook them with the soup the whole time. And fear not-- they'll also heat up quickly in the hot chowder.

* * * * * * * *

And for your reading pleasure, here is MOBY DICK's preceding chapter-- Melville's famously pithy description of the island of Nantucket and its inhabitants:

CHAPTER 14. Nantucket.

Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning; so, after a fine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket.

Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it—a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they don’t grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools before their houses, to get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades in a day’s walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes, something like Laplander snow-shoes; that they are so shut up, belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island of by the ocean, that to their very chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering, as to the backs of sea turtles. But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois.

Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was settled by the red-men. Thus goes the legend. In olden times an eagle swooped down upon the New England coast, and carried off an infant Indian in his talons. With loud lament the parents saw their child borne out of sight over the wide waters. They resolved to follow in the same direction. Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage they discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory casket,—the poor little Indian’s skeleton.

What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take to the sea for a livelihood! They first caught crabs and quohogs in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last, launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery world; put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it; peeped in at Behring’s Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood; most monstrous and most mountainous! That Himmalehan, salt-sea Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults!

And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer’s. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a right of way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business, which a Noah’s flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.