Last Night’s Dinner

As I feared might happen, I caught Mike’s cold. It hit me hard on the commute home yesterday, and by the time I got home I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get it together to make dinner. But we had clams, fresh beautiful local littlenecks, and they wouldn’t keep, so when Mike got home we worked on dinner together.

This is my adaptation of a recipe I found on epicurious.com. We both love the combination of pork and clams, and I am always looking for new ways to prepare them together. This recipe was a breeze to put together, used just one pot, and had us both happily slurping up every last bit of the savory broth from our bowls.

Clams with Hot Italian Sausage and Fennel
(adapted from a recipe in Cooking Light via epicurious.com)

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large fennel bulb, cored and thinly sliced
2 tablespoons chopped fennel fronds
Kosher salt
1/2 pound hot Italian sausage, removed from casings and crumbled
2 teaspoons crushed fennel seeds
1 tablespoon tomato paste
8 oz. white wine
2 dozen small clams (we used littlenecks, but you can substitute Manilas or other small clams)

Heat the oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot with a lid. Add the sliced fennel, salt, sausage and fennel seeds and sauté until sausage is brown and fennel is tender, about 10 minutes. Make a hot spot and add the tomato paste, allowing to cook for a couple of minutes before stirring it through. Add the wine and bring to boil. Add the clams and half of the fennel fronds, cover the pot and cook over medium heat until the clams open, about 5-10 minutes. Spoon into deep bowls, discarding any unopened clams, and sprinkle additional fennel fronds on top. Serve with toasted crusty bread to soak up the broth.

Pasta with shellfish is one of my favorite combinations, but I was never really a fan of the clam sauces that are served in many restaurants - chewy chopped clams in either a marinara or alfredo sauce, scooped on top of a pile of soggy noodles. This light, fresh version is neither a white sauce nor a red sauce, but it combines some of the best elements of both. It has quite a bit of heat from the chiles, so feel free to adjust the amount to your taste.

This is a simple meal that comes together extremely quickly. Get a big pot of water boiling to cook your pasta, prep your sauce ingredients while you wait, and the hard part is done - the actual cooking takes just minutes.

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
Kosher salt
1 teaspoon red chile flakes
18 littleneck clams, scrubbed
1 cup white wine (I used a Venetian Pinot Bianco which we also drank with the dish)
1/2 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/4 cup chopped basil or mint
1/2 lb. linguine or spaghetti

Cook the pasta in an abundant amount of salted water, according to package directions.

While the pasta cooks, sauté garlic in olive oil until fragrant. Add the cherry tomatoes with a pinch of salt and cook until softened. Add the chile flakes, clams, wine and half of the herbs, cover the pan and allow the clams to steam open, gently shaking the pan a few times while they cook. Discard any clams that do not open. When the pasta is just short of al dente, add it directly to the pan that the clams and sauce are cooking in and toss through to coat. Allow the pasta to continue cooking in the sauce for just a few minutes, then plate and sprinkle the remaining fresh herbs on top.