The Food Table, Preserving the Italian American Kitchen, Illustrated Recipes and history of Italian American Foods with Personal Memories,Clams and spaghetti

Clams and spaghetti: when we were kids there were two versions of this dish, one in summer and one at Christmas. While in those days, both versions were in tomato sauce, as were all Italian dishes, summer clams were directly from the beach in front of our house. Christmas clams came from the fish monger. While the fish monger’s Christmas clams were small and delicate, summer clams were big and tough. In fact, summer clams were called “piss clams.” Now, that may certainly seem a strange name, but if you’ve ever gone clamming on a New Jersey beach you know exactly what it means. To find the clams, you go down to the water’s edge. As the tide moves in and out, you see the little dark circles of the clam’s syphon just above the sand. You reach down and yank out the clam. As the suction burps with the pull, the clam lets out a squirt. And if it’s facing toward you, it’s right in your face: “piss clam.” When you gathered up a bucket full, back home to the kitchen you went. The clams were steamed open, removed from the shell and then chopped into small pieces. By the way, the polite term for these clams is, for this reason, “steamers.” The shells then went off to become the canvas to our box of water colors or to serve as ash trays in those days when almost everyone smoked. In the traditional Italian American style, the clams were then cooked at great length in a combination of a can of crushed tomatoes, a can of tomato puree and a small can of tomato paste. (Does anyone still use all three?) The pasta was usually angel hair spaghetti. That was a great dinner. It had all the elements of summer and shore. I don’t know whether it was our ocean salted and sun browned bodies that contributed to the flavor of the clams or the clams that enhanced the sun and sea that was so much a part of us.

Christmas Eve dinner, the fish dinner, always began with a first course of clams and spaghetti. Back home in the Philadelphia suburbs, there were no more beach clams. Clams for Christmas Eve were a combination of two sources: a bag of real clams and a bottle of clam juice. Once again, the clams were finished in a thick tomato sauce and served on angel hair spaghetti. In those days there was never a thought of serving the clams without the traditional tomato gravy (and we called it gravy). So, when I set out to research clams and spaghetti my first thought was to find recipes that did not depend on tomatoes but that were in a white sauce. Curiously, even when I scoured recipes on Italian Google (google.it), there were no small number that did indeed call for tomatoes. I did find several Italian recipes that did not have tomatoes but did include shavings of zucchini. There were also soups that were founded on a base of pancetta. One thing that nearly all included, whether with red or white sauce, was red pepper flakes. So, working with various elements, the following recipe is what I settled on. Following the soup recipes, I started with a pancetta base. I think the pork adds a certain sweetness that complements the salty sweetness of the clams. White wine fills out the flavor and a touch of red pepper flakes adds a little more interest. While my primary goal was to work with a recipe that did not include the ever present Italian American red sauce, you certainly could add a can of good quality San Marzano that you have crushed by hand.

What you need

Equipment
Large skillet or wok
Pot for the spaghetti
Spider
Tongs