JuliaFrutti di mare, as they say in Palermo. In New Jersey, they call it gifts of Barnegat Bay. Or, spaghetti alle vongole in bianco in this situation.
Thanks to our summer clamming trips, my freezer always has a few one pound bags with finely diced clam meat and gallons of clam juice stored in 16 oz water bottles. To make this dish I basically have to make sure there are pasta, garlic, olive oil, and parsley on hand.
I start with two 4 qt pots side by side. One with salted water for pasta and another one for the sauce.
In the sauce pot, I sauté on low 6 cloves of crushed garlic in 3/4 cup of olive oil until the garlic just turns blonde — about 5 min. Then I add half a cup of chopped parsley, a teaspoon of dried oregano, hot pepper seeds, a bottle of clam juice, and a bag of clam meat. About ten minutes covered is enough for all these parts to come into a sauce.
If there are some actual clams on hand, they go into the sauce at this point, to just open up. Then they wait on a plate until everything else is ready.
With pasta, I keep it in boiling salted water just a few minutes, only until it becomes pliable, and move it straight into the sauce.
Once pasta absorbs all the sauce liquid, I try it for the texture. It is usually not done.
Keeping the flame high, I add pasta cooking water — ladle by ladle — and stir the pasta in it until all liquid gets absorbed. It takes about five or six ladles to get pasta to a good al dente.
The briny saltiness of spaghetti strands that absorbed the clam juice is hard to beat. We cleaned the plates in silence.
#food #cooking #spaghetti #vongole #pasta #fruttidimare #clams
Thanks to our summer clamming trips, my freezer always has a few one pound bags with finely diced clam meat and gallons of clam juice stored in 16 oz water bottles. To make this dish I basically have to make sure there are pasta, garlic, olive oil, and parsley on hand.
I start with two 4 qt pots side by side. One with salted water for pasta and another one for the sauce.
In the sauce pot, I sauté on low 6 cloves of crushed garlic in 3/4 cup of olive oil until the garlic just turns blonde — about 5 min. Then I add half a cup of chopped parsley, a teaspoon of dried oregano, hot pepper seeds, a bottle of clam juice, and a bag of clam meat. About ten minutes covered is enough for all these parts to come into a sauce.
If there are some actual clams on hand, they go into the sauce at this point, to just open up. Then they wait on a plate until everything else is ready.
With pasta, I keep it in boiling salted water just a few minutes, only until it becomes pliable, and move it straight into the sauce.
Once pasta absorbs all the sauce liquid, I try it for the texture. It is usually not done.
Keeping the flame high, I add pasta cooking water — ladle by ladle — and stir the pasta in it until all liquid gets absorbed. It takes about five or six ladles to get pasta to a good al dente.
The briny saltiness of spaghetti strands that absorbed the clam juice is hard to beat. We cleaned the plates in silence.
#food #cooking #spaghetti #vongole #pasta #fruttidimare #clams
Jacopo Ranieri
Vincenzo Donvito Maxia
Tofu
LaRampa.it
Emanuele