You can smell fried clams at the summertime ferry line in Lincolnville if the breeze isn’t out of the southwest. Or if it is, but someone upwind in a car with open windows is happily devouring a pint of them. I suppose it is all those lobster pounds and small seafood take-outs along the coast that create an association of fried clams and summer. I do love them, and I prefer them with that nice juicy belly attached, a far cry from my first clam experience at Howard Johnson’s many years ago.

I grew up in a household where the head of it, my dad, was allergic to seafood. Just the smell of it cooking made him nauseous, caused by his nearly choking on a bone when he was a child. We ate only fish sticks, which my mom cooked for summer lunches so the smell would dissipate before dad got home from work. I was about 18 when I ate fried clams for the first time with friends at Hojo’s and I thought they were wonderful. Novice that I was, I was perfectly content with rubbery little strips of goodness-knows-what hauled out of the ocean (bait bags, maybe?) heavily battered and fried. Within another three or four years, I was introduced to the real thing, and never looked back.

Fried clams is a food that is either nearly free or that you have to sell your firstborn to afford. Last summer, feeling expansive, I picked up a pint. They tasted very good. I counted them up and divided that number into the total price: $1.27 each. Now some of us can dig our own clams, once we get a permit. We like hen clams, which I chop up for chowder or sometimes use in stuffed clams, or for fritters. Jamie likes steamers. Something about deep-fat frying them, though, makes me a little leery. You have to have the right, deft touch. No one wants tough, overcooked clams, or ones too drenched in the fat they were cooked in.

Toni Bates used to run a snack shack at the ferry dock on Islesboro, the predecessor by a decade or two of the present one. She used a batter made with flat beer. She told me that she kept the shucked clams in their liquid, and then dusted them in a little plain flour before putting them in the batter, and then deep fried them. “I used that batter to fry all kinds of things – mushrooms, onion rings – people loved them. That recipe never failed,” Toni said.

When Toni and her several brothers and sisters were growing up, though, deep fat wasn’t the way they had their fried clams. “My mother used to shuck them and leave them in the juice, and then they’d be wet enough when she dipped them in a mix of a little flour, yellow cornmeal, salt and pepper, and fry them in a little bacon fat,” she said, “My mother didn’t overcook them, they were quite soft.” Those fried clams served with baked beans made Saturday night supper.

Their clams came from Broad Cove or Ryder’s Cove, not far from Toni’s childhood home in the Guinea section of Islesboro, just below the Narrows. Her mother and father both dug soft-shelled clams for frying, and Toni doesn’t recollect seeing hen clams gain popularity until the past 20 or so years. My neighbor Andrew Coombs digs clams commercially, but we all know better than to ask him where. He delivered up half a hod full of perfect frying-sized clams on request. I tried cooking them two ways, one as Toni’s mom did them, the other with Aunt Jemima’s Pancake mix stirred up with flat beer, which has a solid, local reputation for making a good fried clam.

It is exciting to make fried clams. The smoke detector goes off, the room fills up with a fine greasy mist which clouds up my glasses. Occasionally a clam will explode and shower hot oil around. The family stands around in wide-eyed wonder. It smells like summer, like vacation food in here for an hour or so. And the clams don’t cost $1.27 each.

I liked them both ways: The simple pan-fried ones for the good flavor and the batter-fried for a sentimental, real commercial fried clam experience, somewhat more tender.

Here is how I did them. Start with shucked clams in their liquid.

Pan Fried Clams

Put two tablespoons each of flour and yellow corn meal in a pie plate, several grinds of the pepper grinder, and a few hearty shakes of the salt shaker. Swish it around to mix. Melt a tablespoon or more of bacon fat on the black iron fry pan and as soon as a drop of water will jump, dip both sides of the clams in the flour and cornmeal, and lay on the hot pan, and cook for three to four minutes until golden brown. Drain. That amount of dry mixture will easily do a dozen clams.

Deep Fried Clams

For every dozen clams you intend to cook, figure on one-half cup of Aunt Jemima’s pancake flour, and one-half cup of flat beer. Mix it up the night before. In a deep, heavy pan, or in a wok, melt lard or shortening, at least three inches deep. Toss the clams in plain flour, shake loose flour off, and then dip into the batter. Let the excess drop off, then slide into the hot fat. Cook for about three minutes until golden brown, flipping them over half-way though. Lift them out with a slotted spoon. Drain well on paper, and serve quickly.

Sandy Oliver cooks and writes on Islesboro.