Linguine alle vongole
Italy's food markets + a classic Italian seafood pasta
We’ve had some great restaurant meals during our month-long stay in Italy, but we’ve cherished visiting the local shops and markets and cooking at home even more.
We’re enjoying cheeses such as genuine mozzarella di bufala, sheep’s milk ricotta, Pecorino Romano, and other specialty cheeses we either can’t find at home or that simply taste better here.
We’ve cooked and consumed our share of Italian greens, such as cicoria (dandelion greens), cime di rapa (broccoli rabe), and puntarelle, a relative to endive and escarole, which is julienned and served as a salad with an anchovy sauce.
We’re sampling a variety of bread and baked goods we can’t find back in the States and filling up on all sorts of other foods we miss, like artichokes, homemade pasta, tripe, rabbit, and wild boar. And we’re relishing seafood every chance we get.
We do most of our shopping at markets. Indoor and outdoor, large and small, vast and specialized, food markets are common throughout Italy. Large markets are open daily, while smaller neighborhood markets are open a specific day of the week.
Last week, we visited Mercato Trionfale. Located in the Prati neighborhood not far from Vatican City, the market offers a wide variety of fresh fruit and vegetables, meats, cheeses, baked goods, dry goods such as pasta and legumes, nuts, bread and baked goods, and seafood. With over 250 stalls, it is Rome’s largest and also oldest market. The food is fresh, the variety is excellent, and the vendors are full of personality.
We chatted with the vendors from each stall we bought from and even some from stalls where we didn’t, exchanging pleasantries, gathering cooking tips, and expressing appreciation for their products. That human connection is part of the social fabric of Italy, as important to our health and well-being as the quality of the food we are consuming.
Of all the markets, the fish market may be our favorite. In land-locked Minneapolis, we simply cannot find the variety or freshness of Italian seafood. This morning, we stopped by pescheria to appraise the offerings and select something to make for lunch.
We admired the shimmering and silvery orate (sea bream) and spigole (sea bass), the cranky-looking cernie (grouper) and the flattened sogliole (sole). We asked about the palombo, a small member of the shark family that’s apparently called “dogfish” in English. We were tempted by the cannocchie, a crustacean that can also be eaten raw, and the calamari, but decided to keep things simple and purchased some vongole (clams) for a first course of linguine alle vongole, with two fillets of tuna for our second course.
Simple, but delicious.
Linguine alle vongole
4 servings
Ingredients
1 package of linguine (500g or 16 oz)
Fresh clams, 500g or 16 oz. (See notes below)
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Two cloves of garlic
Red pepper flakes (if desired)
1/3 cup dry white wine for cooking
Salt
A bunch of flat-leaf Italian parsley
Tools & Equipment
Saucepan
Pasta pot
Spaghetti claw or tongs
Ladle
Directions
If your clams need purging, submerge them in a bowl of cold water, add one tablespoon of salt, and let them rest for 2-3 hours. Rinse them and set them aside.
Prepare a large pot of water. Cover it and place it over high heat to bring it to a boil
Chop the parsley.
Cut each garlic clove into 2-3 pieces.
Sautè the garlic in the olive oil with a dash of red pepper flakes, if desired, until the garlic is fragrant and browned. Remove and discard the garlic.
Add the clams to the pan, cover them with a lid, and increase the heat to medium-high for a few minutes until the clams begin to open.
Remove the lid, add the wine, and allow it to cook off, stirring the clams occasionally to help them open.
When the clams have fully opened, turn the heat off. Remove the clams from the pan and place them into a separate bowl, leaving the sauce in the pan.
Toss a handful of salt into the boiling water and add the linguine. Use a wooden spoon to submerge them under the water. Cover and cook them for about 3-4 minutes less than the cooking time noted on the package.
Place the pan with the clam sauce back over medium heat.
Use a spaghetti claw or a set of tongs to remove the linguine from the pot and transfer it to the saucepan with the clam sauce. Preserve the pasta water.
Gently stir the linguine in the saucepan, allowing them to absorb the clam sauce and continue cooking. Use a ladle to add water from the pasta pot as needed. Taste the pasta occasionally for firmness.
When the linguine are close to al dente, return the clams to the saucepan to heat them back up.
When the linguine are ready, turn off the heat and transfer the linguine with clams to serving plates, using tongs to distribute the clams evenly and a spoon to drizzle the sauce at the bottom of the pan over each plate.
Add a sprinkling of parsley to each plate and serve hot.
Notes
Use the “Veraci” variety of clams if you can find them, but Littleneck and other varieties will work, too.
Some clams have sand and other grit in them. Ask your fishmonger if the clams need purging or if they are ready to be cooked.
Substitute spaghetti for linguine if you wish.
You obtain more flavorful pasta by removing the pasta from the cooking water before it is fully cooked and allowing the pasta to finish cooking in the sauce. The total cooking time until al dente will be a minute or two longer than the total time noted on the pasta package.
Remember to place an empty dish on the table to collect the clam shells.
Pairing
We enjoyed a Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi with our linguine alle vongole. a white wine from the Marche region near the Adriatic Sea. It is a crisp, fresh wine that pairs particularly well with shellfish and other seafood.
How to avoid looking like a tourist
Stay tuned for next week’s newsletter, where we will share a few of our secrets for escaping the tourist crowds, explain how to order a caffè in a coffee bar, and tell you what not to do in Italian restaurants.
These market pics had me missing Italy!!! Thanks for sharing!
Well written as usual!