OK, so we're halfway through August (egads, even more than half!), and if you haven't had your summertime fix of lobster and steamers yet, I ask you to do so immediately. Lobster and steamers is hands-down my favorite summertime meal. Of course I love a good bbq with ribs, pulled pork, and all the trimmings, but in July and August its hard to beat steamers and lobster. While in Maine a few weeks ago I was lucky enough to pick up incredibly fresh seafood at the Beach Plum, which made for a perfect vacation-home-cooked dinner. A few shots of the process, with a recipe following:  Here's my approach, which i think was the best version I've ever made:

Ingredients:

• 1 lb steamers
• 1 & 3/4 lb Lobster
• 2 Tablespoon Kosher Salt
• 3 Tablespoons melted, unsalted butter

Process:

• Soak the steamers in cold water for 5 minutes, and drain. Do this 3-4 times until you no longer see sand in the water. 
• In a large pot, bring 2 inches of water (with the salt) to a boil and reduce the heat to medium. 
• Drop in your lobster, cover and cook for 8 minutes
• Add the steamers, cover and cook for an additional 3-4 minutes until the steamers open
• Remove the steamers as they open to a serving bowl
• After a total of 12 minutes, remove the lobster and set in a plastic bowl for 5-10 minutes
• Meanwhile, ladle out some of the broth from the pot (hopefully without any sand) into a clean serving bowl
• While the lobster is resting, eat your steamers! Dip each removed clam into the broth, then the bowl of melted butter, then drop into your mouth. Amazing!
• After you've eaten your steamers, come back to your lobster, set it on a cutting board and give it a good whack with the back of a chef's knife along the side of each claw to help you cracking at the table, and also drain any excess water. Hold the lobster up by its tail with the claws down and drain any water over the sink. 
• Serve on a plate, break open as you desire and and eat away with more of that melted butter

And if you're lucky enough to have a wife like mine who enjoys baking (and is insanely good at it), end the meal with some homemade blueberry pie with wild maine blueberries:

Steamers have perhaps the best "ease of prep" to "amazing meal" ratio I can think of. I stumbled across the fish monger at the Windsor terrace farmers market on Wednesday and was happy to see steamers for sale.

Great lunch, here's what I did:

- Soaked and rinsed in several cold water baths.
- brought an inch of water to a boil
- tossed in the steamers
- covered and cooked for about 4-5 minutes
- plucked out the open clams as they opened
- strained the resulting broth through a paper towel
- had a bowl of warmed butter as well
- and a bottle of Geary's summer ale ( a little nod to Maine)

Then it's as easy as:

Shuck off the casing, swirl in broth, swirl in butter, toss it back, and add a swig of geary's. Perfect!

Made my chowder recipe this weekend that I had scribbled down on paper when I made it for the first time on the vineyard. The start is hands down the best part:

Steaming 5 dozen little necks in 5 cups water. Ma and Pa bought me a real-deal steamer with the broth spout for my birthday last month, and the thing is perfect. Simple, huge, and fun.

5 dozen clams makes about twice this amount when shucked. But only about 4 dozen make it into the chowder as it's impossible to not toss several back with an ice cold ale while shucking. Even in 20 degree weather clams and beer taste perfect.

While the shucking is going on, I'm sauteing 3 strips of bacon (chopped), and a medium yellow onion (also chopped) in 2 tablespoons of butter. Watch out!

Once the bacon is hard, and the onions are soft, I add 4 cups of the clam broth left over from steaming (that spout makes this super easy as none of the sand can come through. Brilliant! But if you don't have that, you simply strain the broth through several layers of cheese cloth.), along with 5 medium red potatoes (diced). My potatoes seemed too large though in total volume so I added another cup of broth. I also add 1 teaspoon of ground white pepper. This cooks on medium heat (covered) for about 30 minutes untill the potatoes are soft. Then add the shucked clams, 1 cup light cream, 1 cup milk, and 1 tablespoon fresh thyme. Cook for 20 more minutes, uncovered. Then i add in 1/2 pound cod cut into bite size chunks, a final cup of milk, and turn off the heat. Let it come to room temperature (the fish cooks during this time), and then put in the fridge for at least 4 hrs, preferably overnight.

That's what you get when you reheat and serve the next day. This one was too heavy on the potatoes and a little too thin on the broth. I should have kept it to the same amount of clam broth, and just not cooked all the potatoes. But adding a little more white pepper at least brought a little more flavor into it. Froze two quarts of it for later this winter. Now that will be a tasty treat one Friday night. Looking ahead to that surprise when we unearth it from the packed freezer.