I love clams. I love clams so much I have one tattooed on
my body. Is that true? What do you mean is that true, of course that's
true. You have a clam tattoo? Yeah David, it's right there. It's a clam. Hello, welcome to Home Movies. I'm Alison Roman. Today we are going to be making probably my
favorite pasta of all time? It is clam pasta, also known as linguine and
clams, or alle vongole and whether or not you're using linguine or fettuccine or spaghetti
like we are here today, the point is, it's about the clam, it's about the pasta, it's
about their beautiful union together. Basically the idea is that you steam open
the clams in a white winey, brothy sort of sauce and then you add your pasta. You finish cooking your pasta in that liquid. The clams have something really flavorful
to steam open into and they're going to give you a lot of really salty, briny liquid for
which to cook that pasta. Not unlike carbonara where like most of the
magic happens by cooking your pasta in that sort of diluted egg yolk mixture, the sauce
becomes thickened not through any other magic other than like pure starch and water combination. And because that clam liquid is so concentrated
and delicious and like intensely briny, each strand of pasta tastes of clam, and that is
how it should be I think. The first thing I'm gonna do because it takes
the longest is I'm gonna get my pot on to boil, the second thing I'm gonna do is I'm
gonna wash my clams. I know because before I bought these clams
that these clams come pre-soaked and purged and rinsed. If you're not sure where your clams come from
or if they're especially fresh, then you would definitely want to soak them in cold water
for like a few hours because what will happen is the clams actually filter out water and
in doing so, they get sand trapped in their little bellies. This is true right? I mean I'm describing it in a way that probably
has some holes in the story but clams are sandy because they live in sand. And I like to kind of just move them around
one another to try and free them from any sediment now. The clams are almost always purged for you
and well scrubbed and cleaned but even still like, this water's a little murky so I do
this every time just like as a precaution. The one time you don't do it, your pasta will
be sandy and you can't pick sand out of your pasta. Alright I'm gonna change this water and them
I'm gonna cover it with more cold water and then I'm gonna move on. We'll start by making the breadcrumb topping. I think that breadcrumbs are a really excellent
topping for this particular pasta because it tends to be very brothy and liquidy and
like it adds a lot of texture to the end. I've also done this with like crushed, toasted
walnuts which is also really good. For the breadcrumbs, I'm just gonna use Panko. And I'm gonna toast them in olive oil and
that's kind of the first step. And these I'll just season with salt and pepper
and at the very end, I'll add chili flake and that's where we'll get our spiciness from. I don't always love doing it in the clam broth
itself because I find it would almost be overpowering and when it's done this way, there's sort
of just like a suggestion of heat. If you had large, like really nicely coarse,
thick breadcrumbs from like a stale loaf of bread, which I often keep in my freezer, I
just don't have any right now, that would be awesome. I'm using Panko because Panko is a wonderful
substitute. So see how they're like nicely golden brown
now and pretty even. This is like the kind of thing where you do
want to pay close attention and stir pretty constantly. Because these are still like ripping hot basically
from all that oil I cooked them in, I can add the chili flake off the heat. These'll just get set aside. Okay, moving on. This pasta takes a lot of garlic. I'm gonna call for ten cloves. Eight of them are going to be toasted and
two of them will be raw at the end. The double garlic here is what makes this
an even better version of clam pasta. And a lemon. I'm just gonna use the peel and then we'll
use the juice to squeeze over at the end. Alright so I am adding the garlic, the sliced
garlic to the olive oil and I am going to toast it. I really like to make this sauce like as punchy
as possible. It's akin to shrimp scampi in that we're cooking
seafood in like a garlicky white wine sauce but to me the main difference is how much
the liquids give you to cook the pasta in. Shrimp really take but clams really give and
that is sort of what's special about this particular dish. I'm gonna add these clams. And how I'm gonna do that is I'm literally
lifting them up. Just like you would when you're rinsing leaks,
any sediment is going to fall to the bottom so just lift them up and everything that's
not meant to come with it will not. I'm gonna top these with wine and I'm using
about a cup here. I'm using just a Verdejo, it's not too sweet,
it doesn't need to be effervescent, it's not too expensive. I'm gonna season these with salt but very
gently. And I'm not really seasoning the clams, I'm
seasoning the broth really. A nd as soon as I seee this broth come up
to a simmer, I'm going to cover the clams but I want to make sure that everything's
coming up appropriately and I'm at a medium high heat right now. Pasta water is boiling. I'm going to salt that. Again you do want to be mindful of your seasoning
again here too because this liquid could end up being quite salty from your clams, depending
on what clams you're using so if you're nervous, it's better to err on the side of like, I
don't ever suggest under-salting your pasta water but. These littleneck clams at this size are going
to take about the same amount of time as that pasta will to cook to hopefully everything
is ready at the same time. In a perfect world, that's how it would go
down. We'll see. And you can actually see some of those clams
already start to open which is really funny. Sometimes it takes them a while but not these
clams. You don't need to actually cover it. I was wrong. I wasn't wrong I just. These clams are good. They're very, highly co-operative. So we're going to leave that uncovered. And meanwhile I'm going to chop some parsley. No one loves anything as much as I love herbs. Like a day without herbs couldn't be me. I'm like racking my brain thinking of things
you love, it's like herbs -- You know what I love? Mustard. Like I won't even eat a hot dog without it. Cats. No not even cats, your cat. My cat. That's true. It's like when people are like I don't like
kids, I like my kid. I don't like cats, I like my cat. Alright, these are all starting to open but
they're not officially open. It's a soft opening. Friends and family. And you can be a little rough with them because
the more time they get in that liquid, the faster they'll open and we want them to open
quickly because we don't want to cook the actual clam that long, we just want to get
them open so that they give us all their juice. Give us your juice and nobody gets hurt. This is a stick up! Oh, you're robbing the clams of their juice? Is that what's happening? I don't know. Okay, they're almost all open. I'm gonna get a bowl ready because one thing
I like to do is take the clams out and then cook the pasta in the juice without them because
the shells, when you move em around with the pasta, tend to break up the pasta and then
you're left with like weird small strands of pasta. Any clams that are open I'm just gonna transfer
to this bowl. And the nice thing about cooking with clams
in general is that they tell you when they're done, they open, they're done, and that's
it. If they don't open, they're dead and you should
get rid of them. It happens all of a sudden. Oop see that one. Woah. A watched clam does open. But you should taste your sauce at this point
too. This is like the point of no return. It should be salty and briny and well-seasoned. Mmm it is and our clam opened and wow. Blessings on blessings. Alright I think our pasta's probably ready. I love when everything happens at the same
time like it's supposed to. Okay that is perfect, it's like just before
al dente. Instead of draining it, I'm just gonna directly
deposit into this clam liquid. Letting the water drain off into that liquid. And this is where it'll finish cooking. So instead of finishing cooking in this salted
water, I'm gonna finish cooking it in this clammy, briny broth. And just kind of stir it, stir your pasta. I'm gonna add a little bit more pepper. I would say this is good, it's like, it'll
also continue to thicken as it sits. So from here I'm going to add a little bit
of garlic, I think like half the parsley, I'm going to add our clams back, all those
bits of toasted garlic, etc. If you want and if your table could take it,
I would just serve it directly from this pot, alternatively, put it in a big serving bowl
like that. You could finish it with parsley like that. And it does really enjoy a finishing of olive
oil. That's so many clams. Yeah I mean if you're gonna clam pasta, I
don't want like five clams in there. Is it still your favorite pasta? It's still my favorite pasta. The raw garlic, the toasted garlic, the lemon
peel that kind of fried in the oil, and the way that the breadcrumbs that just kind of
soak up that juice. I don't know, the whole thing is just really
fantastic and exactly how I want to eat my clam pasta. Mmm, gosh I love clams. Other than my refrigerator, this is probably
my favorite thing about this kitchen. This sink. Water pressure in this place. Chef's kiss.
