Tara Sutaria's Homemade Vongole is All the Inspiration You Need for Your Next Pasta Night

 

Nobody does exquisite quite like Tara Sutaria - and her homemade vongole is cue enough for that. In a recent post recounting her innumerable jaunts to London over the years across summers and winters, she listed a few special eats that were super close to her heart, and her palate. Leading the charge was a sumptuous plate of vongole, which has us craving the Italian classic right in the middle of the week. Follow the directions below to whip up your own plate of exquisiteness.

Ingredients

• 300 gms spaghetti
• 800 gms fresh clams (about 200gms per person)
• 5 to 8 garlic cloves
• 1 tsp red chilli pepper
• 4 to 5 tbsps extra virgin olive oil
• 1 to 2 handfuls fresh parsley, finely chopped
• Salt to taste
• 1/2 cup dry white wine (optional but recommended)

Method

• Begin by washing the clams in cold water and remove any with broken shells.
• Boil your pasta as you would, save for the salted water as the clams will already be quite salty.
• As the pasta boils, put the clams in a deep frying pan and cook covered over medium to high heat to open them up. This should take about 5 minutes.
• Once opened, remove the meat from half of the clam shells and keep the rest as is. Filter and retain the clam cooking liquid as well.
• Heat half the oil mentioned in a frying pan and go in with the garlic and red pepper and cook until the former softens and then add all the clams and cook for a few minutes. Add some of the clam water to create stronger flavour and then go in with the white wine - cook this till the alcohol evaporates. Keep on heat for another 3 to 5 minutes.
• Once the pasta is cooked, drain it and add to the pan with the cooked clams, bring this together over low heat and finish off with the parsley and olive oil.
• Serve hot.

(recipe from The Pasta Project)

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If you've never cooked with clams before the one thing you do need to know is that they tend to carry sand, even when they're sealed shut. While the first process of cooking the clams to open them up usually tends to get the sand ouy, many prefer to purge their clams instead. This is basically letting the clams sit in heavily salted cold water - enough to make it salty like the sea. Let the clams stand in this for 30 minutes and they will open naturally and release the sand. This process is to be repeated till your bowl does not have any collected sand at the bottom. Usually, 2 to 3 cycles suffice. Additionally, any clams that are open far too wide and don't close even on effort should be discarded.