As olive oil mingles with white wine and the sweet clam juices it creates a fragrant sauce that coats the pasta. Our tip is to undercook the pasta slightly so it can finish cooking in the sauce. Again you can use either palourde clams or hard shell clams for this recipe, we used palourde clams at the Fishery.
Serves four
INGREDIENTS
- 1 kg clams, either hard shell clams or palourde clams
- Linguine pasta for four - about 500g
- 60ml of olive oil
- 100g smoked pancetta or thinly sliced streaky bacon
- 2 garlic cloves finely chopped
- 1-2 red chilli peppers finely diced
- 100ml white wine
- a handful of chopped parsley to serve
- Salt and pepper to taste.
Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and add the pasta and cook until al dente.
Drain the pasta saving half a cup of the cooking water and set aside.
Heat the oil in a pan and add the pancetta or bacon and cook until crisp then remove from the pan and place on some kitchen roll to drain.
Add the garlic and half the chilli's to the pan that you just cooked the pancetta to brown a minute or two.
Add the clams and wine and turn the heat up to high, cover and cook until the clams have opened, 5 to 10 minutes.
Remove the clams from the pan with a slotted spoon and set aside.
Bring the sauce up to a boil, add the cooked pancetta, the drained pasta and the reserved pasta cooking water and mix well for a minute or two to combine, add more water or wine if too dry.
Add half the parsley, season and place the pasta mix onto serving dishes, arrange the clams over the pasta, pouring over any juices that may have been released over the pasta.
Garnish with the rest of the parsley and chilli and a flourish of olive oil and enjoy.
Recipe and picture Saveur.com