Evie Eats Everything

Yay my food and wine magazine is here!  To celebrate, I made a recipe from it.  I went to SUPER FOODS and Dragon Star in frogtown last weekend and got about a dozen littleneck clams.  Except I think they were labelled wrong, and they should have been called bigneck clams, because they were huge.  Way bigger than what I think littleneck clams should be.  Aren’t they huge? (That’s what she said).  Ok maybe you can’t tell the scale from this picture, but look at the size of these clams compared to the thickness of the spaghetti noodles!

This recipe was super easy and I would definitely make it again.  The steamed clams were delicious, I paired it with some white wine (duh) and Sean was scared at first because he’s particular about some seafoods, but he loved this dish.  You might think this dish need to be salted, 1 pound of spaghetti and all, but the natural saltiness from the clams are perfect and this dish does not need any extra salt.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound spaghetti
• salt
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 2 dozen littleneck clams, scrubbed (or 1 dozen giantneck clams!)
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
• fresh ground black pepper

Directions:

1. In a large pot of boiling salt water, cook the spaghetti until just al dente, then drain well.
2. In a large, deep skillet, heat the olive oil.  Add the garlic and crushed red pepper and cook over moderately high heat, stirring occasionally until the garlic is lightly browned (~1.5 min).  Add the clams and water, cover and simmer until the clams open, about 5-8 minutes.  It took my gargantuan-neck clams about 8 minutes.  Discard any clams that don’t open.
3. I modified the recipe here by taking out the clams, before I added the spaghetti and chopped parsley to the  skillet and season with pepper.  I didn’t want to toss the clams with the spaghetti, it’s a lot easier to just take them out.  Toss over moderately high heat until the spaghetti absorbs some of the juices, about 1 minute.
4. Transfer to bowl and serve!

SEE HOW GIANT MY CLAMS ARE?  *snicker*

Posted: Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 @ 7:51 pm
Categories: Recipes, Stupid Easy.
Tags: clams, food and wine, spaghetti.
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