Spaghetti Vongole ( Conca del Sogno style)

Pasta with clams.

It sounds complicated but really, once you've sorted the clams, is the most incredibly simple pasta. Vongole is a star of Southern Italy. (Campania is its home) but this is a great (and quick) dish for cooking at home, when clams in season.

In my opinion the best cooking is simple. Key starting place ALWAYS is to find the best ingredients you can get your hands on (and can afford). With Italian food that means starting with great Olive oil (have a lot of thoughts on this-will post separately), good salt, high quality pasta and the freshest, most in season produce you can find.

The best place I have ever eaten Linguine Vongole was at Conca Del Sogno, in Nerano, on the Amalfi Coast. A dream of a long lunch, and the food pairings from heaven with crisp white wine and a simple tomato salad from the tomato gods. Managed to coax a few tips from the head waiter (passed on from the chef) of what made it so incredible and the rest is my trial and error.

So on we go to the vongole!

Ingredients:

• 400 g linguine, spaghetti or vermicelli (about 100 g or an 'ok sign' per person)

• 200g fresh clams per person. As fresh as you can get.

• 4-5 garlic cloves peeled and finely chopped ( I like to go long)

• 1 peperoncino (red chili pepper) or dried chilli flakes amount (add depending on how hot you like it!)

• 4-5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (5 good glugs)

• 1-2 generous handfuls fresh parsley (chopped)

• salt to taste (we don’t add it to the pasta cooking water)

• 1/2 glass dry white wine (any is fine)

A few tips on the ingredients:

1. The Pasta. Any narrow long pasta (Spaghetti, Linguine(even Vermicelli) will work. The thin pasta soaks up the delicious sauce. Dont bother with short pasta. I personally rate Rummo pasta (super widely available outside Italy too) but Pasta Liguori is also very special. Use dried pasta.

2. The Clams. Vongole Verace ('True Vongole') are the ones most used in Campania but literally any clam will do. Fresh fresh fresh is key.

Method

1. Wash the clams in cold water in a bowl and remove any with broken shells. Some kinds of clams need a lot of rinsing if they have sand in them Just rinse them in a large bowl with lots of fresh water. The let them sit in the fresh water for around 20 mins.If there is sand in the bottom of the bowl, you can then rinse it out and repeat. Discard any clams that are open at this point. You can also filter the liquid after you have cooked the clams, so don’t worry so much about the sand at this point, but a good rinse to start is key.

2. Once washed, put the now clean clams in a deep frying pan with a little of the water you just washed them in. Put the pan on the stove, on a med/high heat and cook the clams in the pan until they have all opened. Any unopened ones throw away.

3. While the clams are cooking, squash the garlic cloves in a garlic crusher and finely chop the chilli (or get the flakes out) . If using a whole chili chop finely and remove the seeds.

4. Put a large pot of water on to boil for the pasta. Always cook pasta in a pot that you think looks too big for it. Water/ pasta ratio when cooking is key. Normally I would say to add enough salt to pasta water so that it tastes as salty as the sea, ie more than perhaps you might have been used to. I learned that tip from the King of Pasta, Tim Siadatan, at Trullo and its truly been a game changer. Anywa, given, the clams will already be pretty salty, in this case, just add perhaps two turns of a salt shaker. When water starts to boil add the pasta.

5. Clams should by now be cooked so allow the clams to cool a little bit so you dont burn your hand and then remove the meat from most of the clam shells keeping some intact. Discard the empty shells and, if you need to, filter the liquid that the clams have produced. Don’t throw it away- it makes the sauce delicious.

6. Add three glugs of olive oil to frying pan and add the garlic, cooking low until soft, golden and then add the chilli/ pepperoncino.

7. Now add the clams (with shells and without) with their liquid to the pan and cook for a few minutes. Then, add the white wine and cook around 2 minutes. Finally, add the parsley and the rest of the olive oil. Continue cooking for another 3-5 minutes and then turn off the heat.

8. Now. Stop. Important step. You have your cooked pasta, you have your clam sauce. Drain the pasta but keep about half a cup of the pasta water. Again, another Trullo tip but adding left over pasta water to your (any) pasta sauce does something amazing to the starch in the pasta and it makes your sauce glisten and the flavours deepen. Game changer.

9. Add the pasta into the pan with the clam sauce, then slowly add the left over pasta water, stirring until the sauce and pasta 'bind' or as they say in Italy, fare 'l'amore'.

Serve immediately with another sprinkling of chopped parsley if you fancy.

Pour yourself a glass of crisp white, a Fiano or Vermentino from Campania if you are being very clever and transport yourself here.