Cynthia Yeh's CBE summer 2012 internship experience

Essentials as a MIIS student: Your Tongue

SUBJECT: CLAMS-general

It’s not a tongue, it’s a foot!

I’ll write about tongues, but first, about the clam and its foot.

Clams are essential for ecosystems health. They filter dirty particulates from the water and then release clean water back into the environment. Clams are much like oysters and mussels in this manner. Mollusks are important in the Earth’s water cycle and are often found in sandy or muddy banks cleaning up after everyone’s mess. How does a clam clean up our mess you ask?

This is the inside of the clam.
In a sentence, basically, water with particulates goes in the clam through the foot and clean filtered water with-out particulates goes out the foot. We are lucky that these amazing creatures do so much for us, and have a high fecundity (fertile at a young age and has many babies), and have a low trophic level (meaning it takes very little food input to receive a lot more output), and taste amazing!

 

RECIPE: Cynthia’s never-been-tried-before, let-me-know-how-it-tastes Clams in black bean sauce
Ingredients: 1 lb of clams, 1.5 tablespoon of Lee Kum Kee (in red, green, gold glass jar) Black Bean Garlic Sauce, 3/4 cup of water
Servings: 2 people
Time: 35 mins
Directions:
1. From an Asian market: Choose clams that move by squirting you with water when provoked, sitting in fresh clean flowing water. From a reputable store: compare the species and source of the target clams to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch ap to make sure the clams are from a sustainable source.
2. When home, gently slide clams out of bag and rinse them in running water in a non-metal bowl until water is clean. Rub any residue off the clams. When complete, refill the container with water until 1 inch above clams. Place 2 metal spoons at opposite sides buried into the clams to induce them to spit out undigested contaminants. Leave for 25 minutes.
3. Rinse off the clams one last time. Pour out the water from the clam bowl. Be ready to cook.
4. Mix the 2 tablespoons of  Black Bean Garlic paste with the 1/2 cup of water. Have it ready.
5. Heat your Non-teflon wok/pan (the clams will scratch the material off which is bad). Heat the wok until it’s hot. When hot, Immediately pour in the clams, and clamp down the lid to let the heat steam-cook the clams.
6. Wait 30 seconds, then open the lid and pour in the watered-down sauce. Use a spatula or wooden spoon to mix the clams and sauce around, then reclose the lid. Turn heat down to med-high (so you hear the clams sizzling, but not burning) for 5-10mins.
7. Check clams after the initial 5 minutes because a clam is done when the shell pop open and the flesh is exposed. Finish time varies with stove temperatures. When clams are opened, pour dish onto a platter and serve hot.

STORY: ABOUT THE TONGUE
When I had meant tongue, I meant language. MIIS, the graduate institute of international studies, values its multi-cultural atmosphere and so every student must be very proficient in at least 1 other language. This means that every student starting MIIS knows a minimum of 2 languages well. For example, I speak 4 languages well, and I’m learning a couple other languages from fellow students – just for kicks. It amazes me to hear private discussions of varied languages all around campus, which is fascinating to witness, but it’s become habitual after a year. I love the encouraging language atmosphere because stumbling through a language is difficult and can be discouraging.

One skill our Chinese teacher encourages us to use is to conduct professional research in another language. Even in our primary language it is not easy to absorb a multitude of high level research and then produce one clean analysis. There is also a very big difference between looking for research in English and translating the results into Chinese versus searching for all the research in Chinese and producing a Chinese document. Actually, it is just like a clam! A clam intakes particulates and produces one clean stream of water!

So apparently I am a clam at EDF (contrary to someone else comparing me to an anemone)! I spend most of my time intaking lots of scientific articles and I produce pure data for PSA analysis, or condensed reports for other teams to use.  Here is what I see everyday:

  

REFLECTION:
Thankfully, I can be an American clam while at EDF. No one here has asked me to conduct research in Chinese because most of the focus is in currently in Latin American.
Unfortunately, I will have to go back to trying to be a Chinese clam when I return for my 2nd year of graduate school at MIIS.

Yet, I know being a Chinese clam will have its advantages as China’s impact in the seafood realm increases. As of now, I am a much more efficient American clam than a Chinese clam. Speculating, I am an American-Chinese hybrid species sitting in an American estruary and when I encounter Chinese water I find that their particulates are particularly difficult to digest, but hopefully with more practice it will become easier.

Posted by on August 4th, 2012 at 1:54 pm and tagged  | Comments & Trackbacks (0)




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