Connections

Round Swamp Farm on the Three Mile Harbor Road in East Hampton, with its remarkably fresh produce and fish and back-room bakery, is one of the finest kind. So I was sorry to realize how hard hit it had been this spring. Caroline Snyder, one of its owners, told me that business had been so far off that it wouldn't be possible to make up the loss even if the weather was consistently beautiful until Labor Day.

Ms. Snyder belongs to the Round Swamp Lester family, which dates to a John Lester from Connecticut, who died here in 1764. The business is a family affair. Quite a number of livelihoods depend on it. You not only pay for quality and taste when you shop here, but are supporting the extended family's way of life. If you are like me, you also hope a little of it will rub off.

The other day, because the weather was so damp and cool, I brought home a quart of Round Swamp Farm's clam chowder. Its look enticed me because it was neither red nor white, that is, neither Manhattan nor New England. It turned out to be exactly what I thought - pure Bonac.

My first visit to East Hampton came at the end of a terribly wet Memorial Day weekend, during which we tried to bring an old wooden catboat here from Great South Bay. We had to leave the boat at the Shinnecock Canal until its huge telephone pole of a mast could be pulled out - it was too tall to get under the old Montauk Highway bridge. Once at the house I now call home, we were treated to an honest-to-goodness Bonac clam chowder, like Round Swamp Farm's.

Bonac chowder contains no milk or cream and only a little chopped tomato. I was amazed by it and it has informed my taste in chowders ever since. That first Bonac chowder was made by Florence Huntting Edwards, my husband-to-be's grandmother. Like it, and with a similar reaction, the chowder from Round Swamp Farm was devoured on a day that had been long and tiring. It couldn't be beat.

Let me suggest that you buy some. If you also pick up a round of the Canadian goat brie the farm carries (a concession to the outside world), some extra fine salad greens (you can ask Ms. Snyder about her dried cranberry and sunflower seed dressing), and some good bread, you'll be set.

However, if you're inclined to cook, the recipe, from the 1939 Ladies Village Improvement Society cookbook, follows.

Clam Chowder,
Long Island Style
2 quarts hard clams
1 dozen large potatoes, diced
Salt pork, about three good slices
2 or 3 onions, good-sized ones
1 can tomato

Parsley, celery, carrots, and green pepper (optional)

Try out salt pork in kettle. Take out slices and dice. Cut up onions and brown in pork fat. Put in potatoes, with rather more than enough water to cover. Cook slowly, not to burn, about 1/2 hour. When cooked, take large can tomato, cutting large pieces. Cook with potato a few minutes, making altogether about two quarts liquid. Put clams through grinder, saving juice. Add clam juice to mixture; let it boil up once or twice. Put in chopped clams last of all; let simmer. This is better the second day. The optional ingredients would be put in with the potatoes.

Helen S. Rattray