A Special Spaghetti Vongole
Simple. Elevated and an excuse to drink great wine.
Jump in, the water is full of live clams (and that’s a good thing!)
ingredients:
5 lbs white or Pacific Littleneck Clams (fresh and live)
8 oz dry spaghetti (Half a bag)
8 cloves garlic (or 4 to 6 sprigs of garlic flower)
2 lemons (Zest and lemon)
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 tbsps unsalted butter
500 ml dry white wine
2 cups chopped parsley leafs
1 tsp chile flake
1/2 fresh baguette
Freshly cracked black pepper
Kosher salt
instructions
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. When reaching a roaring boil, add 1/4 cup kosher salt.
Crush and finely slice your garlic. Set aside slightly soaked in olive oil so it doesn’t oxidize. A
Hand tear half of your baguette into large, irregular pieces. you should have about 12 to 15 large croutons. Set aside.
In a large skillet or Dutch Oven, add 1/4 cups of olive oil over medium heat. Add your chopped garlic and 1 tbsp of black pepper. Let everything slowly come up to temperature. Once hot and sizzling, bring down your heat to medium low and let fry and bloom for 3 to 5 minutes, stirring regularly, making sure nothing burns.
When your garlic and pepper’s aromatics have opened up and the garlic is fragrant and translucent, add your white wine to stop the cooking. Stir so everything combines and let the wine evaporate and reduce for 5 to 8 minutes.
After your wine has reduced add your clams to the pan and cover your skillet or dutch oven. After about 5 minutes some of your clams will begin opening in the steam. Give the pot or skillet a gentle shake once in a while, making sure the brine from the open clams is distributing evenly and that they all have enough wine and garlic sauce sorrounding them.
After 15 minutes check that all your clams have opened. If after 20 minutes any of them are still shut, pick them out and discard. This means they’re dead and not not safe to eat.
Add the pasta to the boiling water. Let cook and after 6 minutes try one noodle. It should be pliable and softer but still crunchy on the inner core. You’ll want to stop the cooking in the water at this point and transfer the pasta onto your pan with the clams so that the pasta continues cooking in the wine sauce. Reserve one full cup of the pasta water to add later to the pan with the clams.
Once you’ve transferred all your pasta onto the same pan, give everything a nice toss every once in a while and make sure everything is well combined. Add your pasta water little by little and give everything a stir. You want movement in the pan so that the starch in the pasta releases and thickens the wine / garlic sauce. Be gentle so that the clams don’t break the spaghetti noodles. Let cook in low heat for another 3 to 5 minutes.
In the meantime, discard the leftover pasta water and in that same pot, over medium low heat add your remaining olive oil, the butter, a crack of black pepper, the zest of your two lemons and your chile flake.
Add your hand torn pieces of bread and toss in the fat, making sure they all get coated in the pepper / lemon butter. Keep the heat low here. You want the bread to fry and lightly toast while your pasta is finishing cooking.
When ready to serve, add to your pasta pan half your finely chopped parsley. Toss well so it get’s distributed evenly. Cook for another 1 or 2 minutes. You don’t want to keep the pasta over heat once adding the parsley so that it keeps bright green and it doesn’t oxidize.
Serve your pasta in a large bowl and on top add your fried, butter croutons. Toss well to combine and finish garnishing with your fresh parsely, the juice of the two lemons you zested, a pinch more salt, pepper and chile flake.
Serve with bowls to discard the clam shells and a crisp white wine.
