Linguine con vongole.
These are cockles.
So the first thing we do when we get them in,
they're good for five or six days in your fridge
from the day they arrive.
Leave them in the net.
Store them in the lowest part of your refrigerator
in a colander over a plate covered with wet towels.
Can you use canned clams for this?
Of course you can.
You would need two cans of baby clams,
or two pounds of fresh cockles.
So what I did was I put them into the strainer
and vigorously rinsed them.
Then I transferred them to a bowl
of well salted, with kosher salt, water, and ice.
You let them sit in salted water for at least half an hour.
Mine have been in there for half an hour.
So I'm gonna pick out the last couple ice cubes here.
I have a large pan to melt anchovies
and make the sauce base.
I have a large pot of water
coming up to a boil for the linguine.
And I have one large deep pan, this is five quarts,
with a tight fitting lid, to steam the cockles
or clams if you're using fresh.
If you're using canned you just dump 'em
right into the sauce.
So we're going to take the clams.
Put them in this back pan.
(clatters)
There's a couple ice cubes left in there,
they'll melt quite quickly.
But I'm gonna pick 'em off.
Now we're gonna add a little of this
already boiling water that we're
heating up for the pasta.
We're just gonna steam these and collect their liquor.
Their clam juice.
So we're gonna put a lid on this
and let them go 'til they all open.
Of course, clams that do not open we discard.
And then we can shell most of them.
In this pan I have enough olive oil
to coat the bottom of the pan.
And we're going to add our anchovies first.
Three of four is enough for two pounds of clams.
We just kind of gently stir these
until the anchovy melts, just like that.
We're going to add our bulb of garlic.
Our thyme and zest.
And then your choice of chili flake,
which everybody has in the pantry right?
Or a little chili paste.
You want chili paste, hon?
Let's do the paste.
The paste is Calabrian red chilies.
And it's actually a little milder than using flakes
because it's in vinegar.
And it's almost like a sweet and spicy flavor.
About a cup of white wine.
And we're going to let the wine reduce by half.
So now I'm gonna turn the heat up a little
'cause we're gonna reduce that.
We can drop our pasta, of course.
What do we always do to water when it comes to a boil?
Salt it!
I've taken a small seafood fork
and just removed most of our clams.
Our wine has reduced by about half
so we're ready to finish our sauce
with the juice of the lemon that we zested.
And to gloss our sauce, our four tablespoons of butter
for one pound of linguine.
And we're going to put in about half of our parsley.
I'm gonna just put the shells that I'm keeping
for garnish with the clams still in the shell
onto a little transfer plate.
And add all of the shelled clams
and all of their liquor, aka clam juice,
or cockle juice in this case, to our large pan here.
(sauce bubbling)
We do not need to reserve starchy cooking water
for this dish, for obvious reasons.
We have all of the natural clam juice.
So we're going to take our pasta, drain it.
A little shy of al dente.
And then let it finish cooking in the sauce.
The very last thing we do is add our celery tops,
or I have that funky micro celery.
And then we garnish with our reserved
clams in the shell.
(whistles)
Just, 90% of them are in there,
this is just to make it look perdy.
And then that last little bit of celery,
I mean of parsley that we saved.
And there you go.
(audience cheering and clapping)
(chimes)