Dan's Papers - August 24, 2007 -The Best Sunday Night Dinner You've Never Had

Last Sunday night, despite the rain, my father decided to treat my brother, mother and I to one of our favorite meals - his famous, grilled littleneck clams. Coupled with my sweet potato fries and grilled corn and my mother's mandarin orange salad, this was my favorite meal of the summer.

I am not sure how our family clam recipe came about, but ever since I was too short to see what was on top of the grill, I have looked forward to devouring as many of these tasty morsels as I could get my hands on. This year, I decided to pay close attention to how my father makes these delicious mollusks, so I can replicate them myself whenever I am feeling nostalgic for these lazy summer Sundays.

Shopping for this dinner was easy. As I did my weekend errands around the Hamptons, I picked up a fresh rosemary and olive loaf from Breadzilla in Wainscott, sweet potatoes from Pike's farm stand in Sagaponack and some corn from Dean's farm stand in Westhampton Beach. Meanwhile, my mother baught five-dozen littleneck clams from Star Bogg's in Westahmpton, extra virgin olive oil and Italian salad dressing from La Parmigiana in Southampton and sliced mandarin oranges, roasted almonds and spring mix salad from Wild by Nature in Hampton Bays. After picking up a Pedro Almodovar movie, we were ready for a night of cooking, feasting and relaxation.

Preparing dinner was a family affair, so the entire meal took only an hour to get from shoppign bags to our plates. While my little brother set the table and washed the lettuce, my father and I set to work on the clams.

First, I chopped up an entire head of fresh garlic and a handful of fresh parsley and mixed them together in a small saucepan, along with a generous layer of extra-virgin olive oil. When the weather is nice, my father usually puts the saucepan directly on the grill to soften up the garlic and flavor the oil. But because no one wanted to stand out in the rain to make sure that the garlic didn't turn brown, we heated this batch on the stove at low heat.

While the sauce was warming, I put the fresh corn, which had been soaking in water and sea salt all day, on the grill. Since the grill had been heating for a while, it didn't take long before the husks were evenly browned and the sweet corn was ready to eat.

Once the corn was done, my father placed the clams on the grill one by one and closed the top. "You need to keep the top closed in order to get the clam shells to open up," my father explained. When the clams were open, my father spooned a heaping portion of the garlic and oil mixture onto each clam.

At this point, I went back inside to crisp the bread and whip up some sweet potato fries. I had washed and cut the potatoes on Saturday and left them soaking in saltwater overnight, so as to draw the natural sugars out and ensure that the fries would be crispy on the outside and moist and fluffy in the middle. Following Emeril Lagasse's recipe, I heated some canola oil in a large saucepan on medium-low heat until it reached 300 degrees, then turned it up to medium-high as I added the fries.

Meanwhile, my mother was busy making the bread and salad. After my brother had sliced the bread into thick slices, my mother drizzled them with olive oil and put them in the oven on broil to crisp them up. For the salad, she chopped a handful of olives and threw them over a big bowl of baby spring lettuces, then tossed in the La Parmigiana dressing and mandarin oranges.

By the time the fries turned bright orange, the bread was crispy and the salad dressed. Just then, my father appeared with a huge tray of perfect , sizzling clams. Each clamshell had golden-brown edges and the garlic inside had the faintest hint of brown and a pungent, delicious scent. As we built our plates and took our places around the kitchen table, "oohs," "aahs" and "mmms" were all we could manage to utter while enjoying the fruits of each other's labor.

Nothing tastes quite as good as a family meal prepared by the people you love most, especially one as fresh and flavorful as this. Enjoy.