A while back, I had a lazy day. All day long the snow drifted down lightly but steadily. After finishing my newsletter, I went to the grocery store for supplies. Then I spent a few hours watching This Week In Law. I don’t know why I’ve taken a liking to this TWiT Network show covering law and technology, but it is becoming part of my Saturday routine.
As the show wound down, I took Camper and Squeeky for a walk in the neighborhood, had brief encounter with a coyote, and then invited my neighbors Angelo and Fran over for Saturday night dinner. In addition to a couple of pizzas, and fresh bread, this is what I served.
Olive oil
1 dried hot pepper (arbol)
1 green onion
4 cloves of garlic, one minced, three smashed and chopped
1/4 cup of flour
1 cup of white wine
2 cups of chicken stock
Adobo seasoning
2 6-1/2 oz. cans of whole Maine clams (Trader Joe’s)
Sea salt and white pepper
1 lb. of linguini, cooked and drained
2 sprigs of fresh tarragon
Preparation
Heat a large sauce pot and add, oh I’d say about a quarter cup of your best olive oil. Mince the green onion and the dried hot pepper and add that to the oil. Now add the one clove of minced garlic. Stir and let the onions and garlic gently sweat down but do not brown them. Stir off the heat as needed. Sprinkle on the flour and stir on and off the heat for about a minute or so, but again, don’t brown the garlic.
Add the wine and chicken stock and bring it all to a boil. Sprinkle on a little adobo seasoning. Smash and chop the remaining three cloves of garlic and add those. Let this simmer very gently for five minutes. I find that adding some garlic to the oil and some garlic to the simmering sauce gives a depth to the garlic flavor.
After the sauce had time to simmer, add the canned clams with their liquid. Stir and simmer for five minutes. Use a scissors to snip the tarragon over the sauce. Turn off the heat and start cooking the linguini. When the linguini is cooked and drained, toss it with the sauce and serve immediately.
Serving
I suggest serving the linguini in bowls rather than plates. Place a big pile of the pasta in the bowl and make sure you get lots of clams. Use a big spoon to get lots of sauce in the bowl as well. You want plenty of fresh baked bread to eat with your linguini and sop up the juice.
We also served a spinach and mushroom pizza as well as a Italian salami and mushroom pizza to go with the linguini (man does not live by linguini alone). We all had second helpings of everything before the food coma set in.
We had Vinho Verde wine from Portugal with dinner and Fran and I sipped a little single malt scotch after dinner, while Angelo drank Hofbräu Dunkel during and after dinner. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!
