Because there's no set menu in a home kitchen, every dinner is a nightly special. But all too often, home cooks find themselves in a rut, recycling the same meals week after week. Nightly Specials shows home cooks how restaurant and home cooking can meet. Acclaimed New York chef and host of the Travel Channel's Epicurious, Michael Lomonaco, along with award-winning food writer Andrew Friedman, offer up 125 recipes that use fresh and spontaneous ingredients to create innovative starters, salads, entrees, sides, and desserts. All the recipes are simple, loosely improvised dishes that will inspire home cooks to be flexible and remain open to each day's culinary possibilities. Best of all they can be selected at the last minute and cooked successfully in relatively little time.
Linguine with Manila Clams and Spicy Sausage
Recipe from:
Nightly Specials
by Michael Lomonaco and Andrew Friedman, Photographs by Shimon and Tammar Rothstein Cookbook Heaven at
Recipelink.com
I wouldn't say that anything goes in the kitchen, but I am an ardent supporter of improvisation. This recipe respects Italian tradition but uses ingredients from around the world in a way that makes it unique, combining the spiciness of paprika-tinged chorizo sausage and the brininess of shellfish. Clams have a distinct flavor of their own, but get along well with other foods, absorbing the qualities of whatever they’re cooked with. Here, they take on the spices and richness of the chorizo.
Servings: 6 as an appetizer or 4 as a main course
Fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
3 or 4 olive oil-packed flat anchovy fillets, drained, rinsed, patted dry, and roughly chopped, optional
1/2 cup onion cut into small dice
1/2 pound cured chorizo* or other lightly spicy, Spanish-style sausage, sliced into 1/4-inch rounds
2 dozen fresh Manila clams, in their shells, well scrubbed
2 tablespoons chopped garlic
One (15.5-ounce) can plum tomatoes, seeded and crushed, with their juice
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 pound dried linguine or spaghetti
1/4 cup basil leaves cut into julienne
1/2 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
Bring 6 quarts water to a boil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot over high heat; add 2 tablespoons salt.
While the water is coming to a boil, heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the chopped anchovy fillets, if using, and sauté over medium heat until the anchovies begin to melt and dissolve, about 2 minutes. Add the onion and chorizo and sauté until the chorizo begins to brown, about 5 minutes. Add the clams and the garlic. When the garlic has softened but not browned, add the tomatoes, season with salt and pepper, and cook until the tomatoes begin to break down, 5 minutes. Pour in the white wine, cover the pan, and cook until the clams steam open, about 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, add the pasta to the boiling water and cook until al dente, about 9 minutes. Drain the pasta and transfer it to a large serving bowl.
When the clams are done, use tongs to remove and discard any that have not opened. Add the basil to the pan with the sauce and continue cooking for just a minute. Remove the pan from the heat.
Mound some pasta on each plate and spoon some sauce over the pasta, being sure to include some chorizo and clams in each serving. Top each portion with parsley and serve at once.
*Its name is used by many as a generic way to reference spicy sausage Spain and Latin America, but in reality there are dozens of types of chorizo. It’s available in fresh, partly cured, and dried forms.
VARIATIONS: REPLACE THE CHORIZO with an Italian-style fresh hot sausage, or skip the sausage entirely and use tiny shrimp called brine shrimp. If you leave out the chorizo and don’t replace it with any other sausage, you’ll have a good, basic red clam sauce to which you can add mussels and/or diced and sautéed red and green bell peppers.
SPICE UP THE SAUCEwith a last from second addition of cayenne or crushed red pepper flakes.
SKIP THE PASTA and serve the sauce over steamed rice.
