shellfish 4ever
I recently made spaghetti alle vongole (that’s spaghetti with clams 2 u and me) for the first time ever (I’m a newly passionate cook - I had sworn off the subject until 2020 and being in luv came and changed my mind; I will tell u more about that another time. Cause today: we talk about shellfish) and I have been thinking about it ever since. I could make spaghetti alle vongole - don’t for one second think I’m gonna refer to it as clams when I could be referring to is as vongole - every night of my life and I would still eat every soft-brine little shell with the same joy spreading through my mouth that I felt the first mouthful. I don’t actually remember the first time I had spaghetti alle vongole, but I think that I’ll always remember the first time I made it. The garlic sizzling in the hot olive oil, the rush of the smell of white wine as I poured it in, spying through the steamed-up lid to see the clams gently popping open, badly chopping the parsley and having to fight the leaves once they were in the pasta to tear them up smaller, the bubbling of the ocean-scented pan. Toby was at work (pre-lockdown, obv) and I made the whole dish on my own, turned on my pink neon and turned off the big light, sat at the table, plugged my laptop in to play LCD Soundsystem’s The Long Goodbye (Live At Madison Square Garden, the best goodbye there ever was. So good it made LCD say hello again, am I right) and ate my food. I drank the white wine I’d put in the dish alongside it, and I smiled to myself every mouthful.
Something u should know about me, if you hadn’t picked up from the first fax me harder, is that I am a true and old school drama queen. That’s not to say I like to engage in drama in my relationships with other people - absolutely the opposite in that regard - but that I express myself dramatically. I am a big cry-er, over-excited, over the moon happy, under the sea sad, wistful, hopeful, hopeless, heartbroken, romantic. I feel everything in my heart of hearts. These are not necessarily good or bad traits: they are just true. And this admission about my most honest self is merely to convey that I feel that shellfish are drama queens too, and that is why I love them. Each and every shell requires prising open, whether by stabbing and twisting or by warming and shaking, and what you discover inside is soft or sweet or salty or bizarre and somehow they all manage to capture the taste of the whole sea, of the weirdness and magic of the sea that is so intangible and yet is just right there running over your feet on the beach, where there’s storms and crashes and feuds and feelings that we will never know or understand and I know I am shamelessly romanticising what might to some ppl just be food but have you ever cheers’d an oyster with your friends and felt the tang of tabasco and the heady taste of the actual fucking ocean rush down your throat?? Because it is fucking romantic. Shellfish are romantic, and they are drama queens, and they are delicious and transcendent and they make me feel some kinda way that other food just does not, u know.
Mussels have a similar effect on me, but this version of my infatuation is tinged with the Romantic’s greatest ally: nostalgia. Mussels make me think of ordering them and only them with my best friend Kiera, (exclusively and obnoxiously) (but ironically, get it?) calling them moules in foraged pubs, when her visits to London revolved around moules and also simultaneously saved my soul from my loneliness; they make me think of the posh French restaurant in Angel that’s shut down now, on the green, that was too expensive for me when I first moved to London apart from their deal on moules, the one that was so French that you could order in French and they wouldn’t bat an eyelid, the one where I used to go with a friend who’s not really a friend any more but that I cherish that memory of; they make me think of sharing them with Ce Ce through Groupon deals and the birthday pictures she posted of me on Instagram where I’m grinning at her over the table in Belgo; they make me think of La Petite Auberge where I went for my birthday meal a few years ago with all my favourite people and they ordered me an off-menu espresso martini for dessert; they make me think of holidays as a teenager, by the harbour in France with my family; they make me think of Toby’s hometown of Cornwall and of when he cooked them for me last week, bought from the fishmonger in Primrose Hill when we walked two ways down the canal to see both the zoo barge stop and the pirate castle. They make me romantic too, fucks sake. I absolutely love it.
To conclude, beautiful ppl who stuck with my shellfish fiending this far, here’s a recipe I co-opted from the amazing Rachel Roddy, for perhaps the best ever pasta dish and one u might have forgotten I even talked about cause it’s been that long: spaghetti alle vongole. This is for 4 people, make sure they r special.
INGREDIENTS:
1kg clams
nearly a whole thing of spaghetti - leave a fistful in the pack and you should be grand
handful of parsley, finely chopped
a pinch of chilli flakes
a small ish glass of white wine
olive oil (several large glugs - forgive me 4 how ugly a word glug is)
3 garlic cloves, chopped
Soak the clams in salted cold water and a big bowl for 1 hour minimum, then drain them to get rid of any sand or grit or those kind of vibes. Heat 2 of the garlic cloves in 2 glugs of olive oil in a big ass frying pan until they’re fragrant (my fav cooking term), then add the wine and the clams. I find I need it on a pretty high heat for this bit - cover with the lid and cook until the clams open, shaking the pan as you go to encourage them to open (there’s a metaphor in there, no? Did I get it already?). Use a spoon with holes in to lift the open clams into a bowl, and then strain the clam wine juice through a sieve into a bowl to get rid of any remaining gritty bits and save the clam liquid 4 later. Take half the clams out of their lil shells and leave half in (this is for drama. You see???), and then cook the pastaaaaa in salted boiling water. Put the frying pan back on a decent heat, add twice the glugs of oil u did before (that’s 4), and add the rest of the garlic along with the chilli. When this is fragrant (again, yesssss), put the clam liquid back into it and get it bubbling, cause u wanna reduce that by like half. Then, when the pasta is done - al dente obv, though I often accidentally do it way softer than al dente and it is still delicious - add it to the frying pan. Add all the clams and the parsley, and toss til everything is covered in sauce and distributed evenly. Then it’s done - serve it up, eat it up and smile to urself as you do. LCD Soundsystem is optional, but advised. xxxx