Cookbook Lottery #3 - Spaghetti Vongole

This weeks recipe proved to be interesting.  I was never a huge fish lover, however, thanks to Sheila, this is changing.  I was introduced to sushi early on in our relationship and promptly fell in love with the sticky rice, succulent fresh fish and salty spicy combination of the wasabi and soy sauce.  This week I got to cook clams, another product I have never cooked with before and I was looking forward to expanding my fishy horizons.  This recipe came from Gordon Ramsay's Healthy Appetite.   

The Clams were difficult to find.  Waitrose could help, but needed 48 hours notice to order them in for you.  I eventually found them at my favourite food shop..  you guessed it.  Korea Foods!  The rest of the recipe was very straight forward.  I did however amend it slightly.  I halved the clam portion (just in case we didn't enjoy them) and I doubled the wine for the sauce.

So, to start, I washed the clams in running cold water, to try remove as much grit as I could.  I then cooked off 150g spaghetti in salted boiling water.  Half way through the pasta being cooked, I poured 2 tbs olive oil into a pan and added 2 whole peeled garlic cloves, 1 red chilli, quartered and de-seeded, a handful of basil stalks and one roughly chopped shallot followed by all the clams.  I plonked the lid on the pan and allowed the clams to steam for 4 minutes.

I then turned out the clams into a colander and allowed all the juice to pour through into another bowl. 

The strained juice was then added back into the pan along with 75ml white wine and 2 tbs chopped parsley. 

The sauce was allowed to reduce for a minute or two whilst I strained the spaghetti.  I then added the clams to the sauce on the stove, dumped in the spaghetti and tossed it all together for a minute.  I didn't want to cook it too long as I was scared the clams would over cook. 

So, within a maximum of 20 minutes, including prep time and photographs, dinner was served!  I dished the pasta up and served it with torn pieces of fresh baguette, as suggested by Gordon, for dunking in the sauce and of course accompanied by a glass (or two) of yummy peachy Viognier.

Thoughts?

I found the clams good and probably could have finished off a quite a few more than the half portion I dished up.  The dish was, disappointingly, dryer than I would have liked even though I doubled the wine as suggested by the recipe.  Once again my desire for saucy pasta rears its ugly head.  Gordon's suggestion of bread to mop up the sauce proved misleading as there was a mild condensation on my plate pretending to be sauce.  Thinking about it now, if I had steamed a full portion of clams, would the moisture generated have been more for the base of the sauce?  Both Sheila and I plan on enjoying this dish again, so next time I will cook a full portion of clams for us and see if there is a difference in the sauce quantity following steaming.  The Viognier, as always, was awesome.