Spaghetti With Clams.

Gli spaghetti con le vongole.

I’m almost embarrassed to include this recipe but I’m asked for it so often that it clearly belongs here, all the same. It’s actually a master recipe again, able to be adapted to so many dishes that it tears at the walls of being a recipe at all.

But it’s also a lesson in producing a factory pasta dish as good as any you’ll find in Italy. First, start with excellent base ingredients: good oil, plenty of water for the pasta, fresh parsley, freshly dried chillis (as opposed to your spice rack left over from college). Then just follow basic Pan-Italian principles. Don’t break the pasta. Don’t add oil. Stir it a lot the first minute. Use plenty of water. Really, really salt it. Pull the pasta early, add it to the ‘rue’. Pull it when it’s properly cooked. If it has fish or shell fish in the sauce, don’t add cheese. Keep it simple, think ‘perfect and less’, versus ‘confused but more’.

Keep in mind that pasta is a textural thing, so anything that changes that will destroy the dish. 30 seconds too long in the water produces sadness as certain as humid crackers or overly-cooked fresh tuna.

Do any of that wrong and you’ll soon have the crime and punishment conveniently located in the same dish. But do it right and you’ll have the world’s most perfect food, a dish so transcendent as to make you feel the height of cleverness each time you sit down to a plate of it.

A good quality pasta, such as spaghetti. I buy mine with the longest cooking time available. (Don’t assume anything : Barilla might be Italy’s number one brand but the stuff sold in the States is made in Wisconsin and it always comes out mushy, etc. Pasta in England and Ireland also cooks up mushy. Spain is the worst. Also, before you trust any of the consumer-based test kitchens, really, really read what they were testing for: often they fixate on the opposite qualities sought after here in Italy, such a ‘bite’ and firmness.

Salt. Don’t use expensive sea salt. Use the cheapest, so that you won’t skimp. Most of it goes down the drain all the same.
Fresh garlic.
Best olive oil possible
Dry white wine.
Dried chilli flakes (more to pass at table, and/or your homemade chilli oil)
Fresh clams (or shrimp, mussels, cockles, sea snails, scampi, etc).


Place covered large pot of water over biggest hob (burner) and bring to a boil. Decide how much garlic flavour you’d like, keeping in mind that shellfish tends towards the delicate (and isn’t cheap, either) so you don’t want to cover up the subtler flavours. Put large sauté pan over hob and coat bottom with oil. Add 10, whole peeled garlic cloves (remembering that counterintuitive nugget that the larger the piece, the subtler the flavour), and bring up to a sizzle and turn off (You want to flavour the oil, not cook the garlic, so ‘sauteing’ isn’t really the case here).
Place a large handful of salt into the pasta water, drop the pasta (when in doubt, have the person who dunks the pasta also salt the water, to avoid any confusion).

Relight the sauté pan’s burner. Drop in the pasta and stir every 10 seconds or so for the first minute. Add the clams and giggle the pan every so often. Add some chilli peppers, less versus more. The clams should take about 4 minutes to open, depending on size and species. Test pasta. You’re looking to see that the white core just starts to fade, or about two minutes less than the package says. Add a cup of white wine, to the clams, it should sizzle. Dump pasta water, but don’t turn off hob and return pasta to pot. Pour clam mixture over pasta, add a glug of raw oil and keep stirring until the pasta tastes perfect, careful not to let it stick to the bottom of the pan. Should be about a minute total. Make sure everyone is at the table, waiting for the pasta (never the other way around). Remove from heat and add a generous handful of parsley and then add some more (it disappears over the pasta). Using tongs, pile pasta onto serving plate, followed by the clams at the end. You want the seafood to be on top and obvious. Do not add cheese. Serve immediately.

Serve with a high-acid white, the colder the better.


Ps. If you prefer cappelletti or ‘Angel’s hair’ pasta, disregard this recipe completely. You’d hate the outcome.