Given our comfortable familiarity today with many Asian flavors, it's stunning to realize that our parents and grandparents considered soy sauce an exotic condiment. Nothing illustrates the situation better than rumaki, perhaps the most popular cocktail snack of the 1950s. Cooks took the idea of tidbits wrapped in bacon, an old American and British favorite, and created a rage with the simple addition of a water chestnut and a soy marinade. Chicken livers usually completed the ingredients for the toothpick-bound morsel, but grillers also experimented with a variety of seafood substitutes. Our favorite version features clams, bundled under the bacon by a skewer. Once remarkably novel, rumaki remains remarkably good.
MAKES ABOUT 2 DOZEN KEBOBS
RUMAKI MARINADE
| ½ | cup soy sauce, preferably a reduced-salt variety |
| 1 | tablespoon minced fresh ginger |
| 2 | teaspoons packed brown sugar |
| 1 | teaspoon Asian-style sesame oil |
| ½ | teaspoon curry powder |
| 24 | small to medium clams, shucked |
| 12 | thin bacon slices, halved crosswise |
| 8-ounce can water chestnuts, drained | |
| Soaked bamboo skewers |
Prepare the marinade, stirring together the ingredients in a small bowl. Place the clams in a plastic bag or bowl, pour the marinade over them, and refrigerate for 30 to 60 minutes.
In a small skillet, par-cook the bacon for about 2 minutes per side, until it loses its raw look and colors lightly but is still quite limp. Drain the bacon and reserve it.
Fire up the grill, bringing the temperature to medium (4 to 5 seconds with the hand test).
Drain the clams, reserving the marinade.
If your water chestnuts taste tinny, like their can, blanch them in boiling water for about 1 minute. Avoiding crowding, skewer a water chestnut and a clam. Wrap them with bacon, making sure it covers the clam in particular, and secure the bacon with the skewer. Dip the kebob in the reserved marinade and then drain it. Repeat with the remaining ingredients.
Grill the rumaki uncovered on medium heat until the bacon is crisp and the clams are tender, about 4 to 6 minutes, turning them several times to cook evenly. If grilling covered, cook for the same amount of time, turning once midway.
Serve the rumaki hot, preferably with mai tais.
TECHNIQUE TIP: Use any kind of small to medium clams for rumaki, but avoid really tiny littlenecks, which resist skewering. Pick the freshest clams you can find, either hard-shells or the soft-shell "gapers" that are partially open and relatively easy to shuck at home with a paring knife. If you prefer to get clams shucked at your seafood market, plan to grill them the same day and keep them refrigerated in the meantime wrapped in a clean, damp dish towel. Live, unshucked clams should also be eaten soon, but can be kept overnight in the refrigerator in an uncovered dish of cool, salted water, with a heaping tablespoon of cornmeal to purge them of accumulated grit.