lobsters and oysters and steamers

I love summer in Chicago.  It's so hard fought, the city just explodes with people and activities and festivals and concerts and everyone is OUT.  And I adore living in a beach town.  I love beach dinners and the hobie cat and kayaks and Lake Michigan.  But despite all this,  I really miss Connecticut in the summer.  What do I miss, you ask?

I miss
the smell of salt water in the air
the feel of salt water drying on your skin when you get out of it
the smell of low tide
tides in general
the prevalence of water - rivers, inlets, harbors, beaches, streams: it's everywhere
drawbridges (I know we have them downtown but I never see them)
the ethnic mix:  men who look like tony soprano and are actually named tony, women who have skin and hair like mine.
Shorehaven
my sisters and my parents and my childhood friends
and, dear reader, I really really miss the food.  Specifically, I miss oysters, steamers and lobster.

Last week we met our friends Steve and Christy for dinner in the city, at a super cool restaurant called R&M Champagne Salon.  Gorgeous summer night, delicious cocktails, phenomenal food.  Steve picked the place and sent the link that morning and here's what I saw on the menu:

Do you see it?  $1 oysters on Tuesday.  And it was a Tuesday!  Here is the email I subsequently sent to the group:

"OMG people!  $1 oysters on Tuesday from 5-8pm. I am going to burst with happiness and excitement.  And eat a million oysters."

Which we did.  With tabasco and lemon and cocktail sauce (which was too light on the horseradish but whaddaryagonnado?).  YUMMMMMMM.

Starting the summer after I graduated high school and through college, every summer I waitressed
at SoNo Seaport Seafood Restaurant.

When I started working there this amazing deck was just about to open, so it was just a tiny indoor restaurant that specialized in lobster dinners, brought in by their own lobstermen, for $8.95.  It was the deal of the century, so when the deck opened, business exploded.  You could sit outside, right by the water, in the summer, and have a reasonably priced lobster dinner and a pitcher of beer and get out of there for about twenty bucks.  SoNo didn't take reservations but quickly opened a raw bar on the side of the deck (see fake lighthouse in above picture) where people could order oysters, clams and shrimp cocktail while they waited.   The wait was regularly two hours so by the time people sat down to eat, they were starving and ready to order their lobster.  That, along with dinner served on plastic trays and at picnic tables, ensured a high turnover, so we made a fortune. 

And we (I say we because, eventually, both Jacquie and Ellie got jobs there, too!) became experts at New England seafood, especially lobsters.    There is simply nothing like the taste of a freshly caught lobster, steamed up and served in its angry red glory.

When we were little, we used to go up to Fairfield Beach (aka Mary's beach, because my parents' good friend Mary Brown and family had a beach house at Fairfield Beach) and when the tide went out, we'd look for the telltale squirt of water made by clams, dig them up, rinse them off, steam them up and devour them.  Steamers.  When you steam them, the clams open up, revealing the delicious meat.  You serve them with some water for rinsing and some drawn butter for dipping and those suckers are delish.

 And then there's lobster.  When my college buddies and I got together in mystic this spring, we bought fresh lobster from a local market and cooked them.  It's scary,  handling those live prehistoric looking beasts and plunging them into boiling water.  It's super barbaric, really. 

But oh so worth it. 

 And one of the great skills I learned from growing up in coastal CT and from years at SoNo is how to deal with and eat a lobster.  Here is a pretty good instruction sheet, although I always used the tiny fork vs my finger.

Step 1

Take off the claws. Tear them off at the first joint, with a gentle twisting motion.

Step 2

Gently remove the loose part of the claw. Check for especially tasty morsels in small parts!

Step 3

Using a nutcracker, break off the tip of the large section of claw, revealing the meat.

Step 4

With your forefinger, push the meat from the tip of the claw out the larger open end. 

Step 5

Grasp the tail portion with one hand, and the back with the other hand. Twist to separate the two sections.

Step 6

After that, turn to end of the tail which has small flippers, or telsons, at the base. Snap this part off.

Step 7

Insert a fork or your finger into the telson end to push the tail meat out intact through the larger opening.

mmmmmmm. Get yourself some seafood.  It's summer.  And if you get the chance, get yourself to New England.

Sunset in Bar Harbor, Maine