Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan [89]
1. Wash and scrub the clams, discarding those that stay open when handled. Heat up the clams to open them, following the directions in the preceding recipe in Step 1 for Clam Sauce with Tomatoes.
2. When all the clams have opened up, take them out of the pan, using a slotted spoon. Try not to stir up the juices in the pan any more than you must. Detach the clam meat from its shell, and gently swish each clam in the pan juices to rinse off any sand. Unless they are exceptionally small, cut them up in 2 or even 3 pieces. Put them in a small bowl, pour 2 tablespoons olive oil over them, cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap, and set it aside for later. Do not refrigerate.
3. Line a strainer with paper towels, and filter the clam juices in the pan through the paper and into another bowl. Set aside for later.
4. Choose a skillet or sauté pan broad enough to contain the pasta later. Put in 3 tablespoons olive oil and the sliced garlic, and turn on the heat to medium high. Cook the garlic, stirring it, for just a few seconds, without letting it become colored, then add the parsley and the chili pepper. Stir once or twice, and add the diced tomato. Cook the tomato for 1 to 2 minutes, stirring it from time to time, then add the wine. Simmer the wine for about 20 to 30 seconds, letting it reduce, then turn off the heat.
5. Cook the pasta in abundant boiling salted water until it is very firm to the bite, barely short of being fully cooked. When you bite a piece off, it should feel slightly stiff and the narrowest of chalk-white cores should be showing in the center of the strand.
6. Turn the heat on to high under the skillet or sauté pan, drain the pasta and transfer it immediately to the pan. Add all the filtered clam juice, and cook, tossing and turning the pasta, until all the juice has evaporated.
If the pasta was not too underdone when you drained it, it should now be perfectly cooked. Taste it and, in the unlikely event it needs more cooking after the clam juices have evaporated and been absorbed, add a small amount of water.
7. As soon as the pasta is done, before you turn the heat off, add the cut-up clams with all the oil in the bowl and the torn basil leaves, toss in the pan 2 or 3 times, then transfer to a warm platter and serve at once.
Sardinian Bottarga Sauce
THE FLAVORS of Sardinia, like its landscape and the features of its people, are unlike anything you may find on mainland Italy. Intensity and force are some of the qualities that come to mind. The provocatively musky taste of bottarga di muggine—dried mullet roe—is consistent with the sensations, so titillating for the palate, that after a sojourn on the island we begin to recognize as distinctively Sardinian.
There are two main schools of thought on how to use bottarga. One maintains that, as with all fish products, olive oil should be used exclusively. Others feel that butter softens and sweetens the roe’s vigorous flavor. My friend Daniel Berger of the Metropolitan Museum, a long-time devotee and dazzling practitioner of Italian cooking, uses oil to make the sauce and butter to toss it. After working with several approaches, I have found butter alone satisfies me best. Danny’s suggestion of scallions I fully endorse, although strict fidelity to traditional practice would suggest onions.
Note Because fine mullet bottarga is expensive, I have scaled the recipe to produce enough for two. I don’t think of bottarga as a condiment for a crowd, but you can easily double or triple the recipe to serve four or six.
For 2 servings
1 ounce mullet bottarga, sliced, then chopped, following directions given below, to produce ¼ loosely packed cup
⅔ cup scallions, both leaves and bulbs cut into very thin rounds, OR chopped onion
Salt
Butter, 1½ tablespoons for cooking onion, plus 1 tablespoon to toss the pasta
½ pound pasta
1 tablespoon parsley chopped fine
¼ teaspoon lemon peel grated without digging into the