By Karyssa D’Agostino
FAIR HAVEN – The annual Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair doesn’t start until Aug. 23, but Linda Feeny and her crew are already hard at work making soup.
Yes, soup.
Manhattan clam chowder is a cherished tradition at the end-of-summer, eight-day-long fair held on River Road. Its special ingredient is those who come back year after year to make it from scratch. This year, a new crew is being trained.
For the past 15 years, Linda Feeny, 76, has served as the head chef for this Firemen’s Fair delicacy. She and her husband Vinny Feeny, 77, have been in charge of the cooking, cooling and packaging portion of the process but are now stepping back.
“As old as we get, we still come back for the fair,” Linda Feeny said.
Early Thursday morning, July 18, the firehouse kitchen was filled with the smells of sizzling bacon, fresh clams and boiling vegetables in stock. Feeny and Joy Jakubecy, 64, explained how the chowder is made while cracking jokes and exchanging family memories.
It’s a long process. The crew makes 150 gallons of soup in three batches over a three-week period. The chowder is packaged and stored frozen until needed.
The process, dating back to after World War II, starts with Dougie MacFarland, 75. He picks up fresh clams from Lusty Lobster in Highlands and stores them in the refrigerator. Later that day a crew of volunteers shucks the clams and another team dices the fresh vegetables supplied to them by Sickles Market in Little Silver. These are divided into containers and put into the fridge for the cooking crew. The next day Feeny and her close-knit group make a 50-gallon batch of chowder.
First, she cooks lots of bacon, chops it up and adds it to the pot of diced vegetables and stock.
Then she adds their secret seasonings measured by her trained eye and eventually a couple of huge cans of tomatoes to make the clam chowder Manhattan-style.
“The recipe isn’t written down anywhere,” Feeny said. “It varies every time we do it.”
For one 50-gallon batch they use 15-20 pounds of onions, 50 pounds of potatoes and carrots and seven bushels of clams.
While that’s cooking, Jakubecy watches intently. Feeny quizzes her from time to time because starting next July, Jakubecy will be running the show.
The shucked clams are given two separate water baths so that Brian Allison, 35, can grind them into smaller pieces. He will be taking over for Vinny Feeny.
Once the chowder cooks on the stove top for a few hours, they add the clams at the very last minute so they don’t overcook.
With the aroma of fresh herbs, seafood and tomatoes in the air, the huge pots are put into an ice bath to cool enough for packaging and storing until the fair. It enhances the flavor of the soup, Feeny said.
