Cooking with Fresh Clams #1

Clams alla Puttanesca con “Zoodles”

My first clamming expedition this season netted me 68 nice, big,, fat clams without much effort. I shared some with a friend and still had a bunch. I decided that my first dish would be a salty, spicy Puttanesca, adding clams and subbing zucchini “noodles” for the spaghetti. But if I was going to make Clams alla Puttanesca, I was going to go all out clam and use all the roughly 4+ dozen clams I had left in the one dish.

This ended up being one of the best clam dishes I have ever made. The sauce was bursting with flavor, the zucchini noodles were crisp tender, and there was just a crazy amount of sweet clams. I can’t wait to make this one for the family later this fall. I got three servings from this recipe, but I served it with nothing else, so if you were having bread and a salad you could certainly get more servings.

I used as my starting point this recipe from Epicurious, omitting the pasta, salt,sugar, and basil, while adding more anchovy paste and chili flake. I did not puree the tomatoes as I prefer a chunky texture.

Have the sauce simmered and seasoned to your liking before you add the clams because you are nearly done at this point. Add the cleaned clams to the simmering sauce and give them a stir to distribute evenly around the pan. Cover and simmer for 8-10 minutes, or until the clams open. Remove the lid and remove the pan from the heat.

With a spoon, remove the clams from the shell and drop into the pan along with any juices. Discard any clams that did not open. I have yet to have any that did not open while collecting my own clams because they could not possibly be any fresher.

Return the pan to the heat and add the zucchini. Heat until the “noodles” are hot, but still crisp. Traditionally you would finish this sauce with less than al dente pasta, with the pasta finishing cooking in the sauce and absorbing some of the liquid. This does not happen with the zucchini, and that, combined with the clam liquor, leaves you with quite a bit of broth.

You can serve the broth in the bowls if desired, especially good if you are having a nice crusty bread. I no longer eat bread, so my preference is to serve it on the “drier” side and reserve the spicy tomato clam broth to use as the base for soup or another recipe. This bowl is now stashed in my freezer just for that.

This is the sprilizer I used to make my zucchini noodles. I cut them from the device every few inches to make shorter, easier to eat noodles. And if you leave the stem end on the zucchini, you will have no need for the end cap to continue spinning the squash as you near the end.