Linguine and Clams

I don’t know what’s come over me lately, but I have been on a serious seafood kick.  For the first time in my life I have been eating fish 2 or more times a week, and I’ve been craving it like mad.  Especially fish tacos.  So when Nik and I went to the local farm stand, I exclaimed that I wanted fish.  By the way, my mother-in-law calls farmer’s markets “the place where stuff grows from the ground” (which means it’s what we call it now too).  At the fish counter, where stuff grows from the sea I guess, we picked up a dozen clammies with no clue what we were going to prepare.

This meal was going to go one of three ways: miso soup with clams, zuppe de pesce, or manhattan clam chowder (Nik is lactose intolerant).  As always, things didn’t go as planned.  Not enough clams for a proper chowder (if you can ever call manhattan clam chowder “proper”), no other fish for the zuppe, and no tofu for the miso soup.  The only downside of our final dish was no good bread for dipping.  Crap.

Ingredients

Serves 4, should cook in about 15-20 minutes tops.

• 1 pound of linguine (I used a combination of regular and squid ink linguine)
• 1-2 dozen clams, cleaned well (you know scrubbed and soaked overnight in water and corn meal)
• 2 cups fish stock
• 1 cup white wine (or more, you lush)
• Handful of diced pancetta
• 6 cloves garlic, diced fine
• 1 large shallot, diced fine
• 1 tsp crushed red pepper
• 2-3 tsp parsley, chopped fine
• Olive oil (the virginer the better)

Directions

• Figure out how to cook the pasta, that’s baby stuff by now Holmes.
• Saute the pancetta until crisp, adding a bit of olive oil
• Cook the shallots until translucent
• Add the crushed red pepper and the garlic, cook until just fragrant
• Whack in some white wine, watch out you don’t want to burn the place down
• Add the stock and the clams
• Cover and crank up the heat until the clams open up
• Take out your al dente (you know, my buddy Al) pasta and add to the pan with your clams
• Sprinkle in the parsley
• If pasta seems a little dry, add a little pasta water (you did put salt in it, didn’t you)
• Serve and sprinkle a little extra olive oil over the top
• Dip lots of crusty bread in any liquid at the bottom of your plate*

By the way, Nik is a good sport, this isn’t her favorite meal — but you watch, I’ll turn her one of these days!

*Andy didn’t have any bread for this, what a waste of good dippin’