Linguine with White Clam Sauce

Linguine with White Clam Sauce is a must on my Christmas Eve dinner every single year. It’s the quintessential Italian pasta dish, especially in Naples and Rome. Here in the States, linguini with clam sauce is made with chopped clams, and I guess this adjustment makes sense, especially since the clams here can be quite large, from littlenecks to top necks to quahogs or chowder clams. Today, though, one is ever more likely to find smaller cockles on the market; if you find them, by all means use them. Buone Feste!

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Linguini with white clam sauce it’s got to be one of my favorite dishes it’s simple straightforward and I just love it so let me show you how I like it garlic plenty of garlic I like slices of garlic some extra virgin olive oil okay and we’ll let that just get a

Little bit of golden color clams wash them well these are little neck clams and they’re delicious you want to make sure that the clams are all nice and fresh and whenever you see a clam that’s kind of a little bit open that’s not really tight uh discarded because that

Means this clam is old okay this is nice and golden we’ll drop the clams right in there okay I’m going to make a little corner hot spot right here I’m going to put in just for that little extra flavor a little bit of anchois not too much

Just a little bit and the anovi will disintegrate right here in the corner a little bit of the dry oregano and get yourself like this a nice little bouquet which is really aromatic and just kind of roll it a little bit till you get a little bit of the ACI it that’s enough

Put it right in there so let me see yes you see the anro is broke up white wine and we’ll let this open I’m going to put the pasta the Linguini in the water to cook Linguini there is a long pasta you need salted water plenty of it

And you just slide the long pasta right right in now you don’t break the pasta if you push it in it will break and you know as Italians like to twirl our pasta so we want it long okay so here we are that’s going to cook away let’s see

Where we are with the clamps so they’re beginning to open up I am going to pull them out so they they don’t Overcook see let just pull the clam right out so stay by the pot and pick them one by one as they open Up you know these take some time but they’re really worth the effort so I’m going to finish them up pluck them them all out save all the juice and then we’ll finish the clam sauce so when we came here as immigrants uh I was 14 years old and you know we

Would go to the beach and uh Sunken Meadow was uh on the NorthShore of Long Island was a park but it had a Sandy Beach it’s forbidden now but with our toes we would dig in the sand and we will feel the clam and kind of pull it

Up put our two toes together pull it out and had a little bucket and we would put the clams in there and we would come with a bucket full enough to make a family meal of Linguini clam sauce now you could chop these I kind of like them

Whole let me put a little peperon Chino in there let’s put the clams back in and as I said you could chop them or you can just leave them like that and I like them like that the pasta should be done I’ll move it over and then I’ll finish it cooking in here

Until it is perfect so just like that right in you know when you cook pasta not only you do not want to put oil in the cooking water you do not want to rinse your pasta because your pasta like this will absorb the sauce and the sauce will stick to the pasta okay

Let’s toss it just like that Mama Mia let’s give it a little bit of heat now a little bit of olive oil I call it raw olive oil just like that at the end when you add like this at the end you get the full flavor of that

Olive oil you don’t lose most of it in the cooking process if you will parsley lots of parsley Linguini clam sauce require parsley let me just toss it like that m it’s done since this is a juicy pasta let’s get close so do I want a little more maybe just a

Little more like that and that’s a winning place at least for me simple straightforward and don’t give me that that spoon stuff to roll your spaghetti just the fork that’s the way the Italians do it so how do you do that just pick up a little bit and then you go in the

Corner and without picking up any new strands you just turn the one that you have and there’s a few hanging it’s okay you’ll slurp them in slowly Perfecto Perfecto delicious