Spaghetti with clams, the recipe.
Nowadays it seems normal to eat or order a plate of spaghetti with clams at a restaurant but it hasn't always been like this: once, as far as I know, in Sestri Levante and perhaps in this whole area, clams were not known or at least they were not part of our cuisine. Spaghetti was eaten with muscles, with limpets, with cornetti, with "grunsci" but not with clams, at least as far as I remember. Describing anchovies with peas I spoke of the maternal side of my family and so regarding clams and seafood that live in the sand I will speak of my paternal grandfather, the founder of my family and his wife, a great woman, silent and tenacious, as well as a great cook.
My grandfather was originally from Campania (Vietri sul mare), a great amateur fisherman while my grandmother was originally from Parma (Fontanellato/Busseto) and a great cook of that tradition. The grandmother with five children on her shoulders knew how to cook with nothing and made the most of everything her husband caught and brought home every day. The grandparents and their uncles lived near the Miramare Hotel and in the summer I came to them every day to go to the beach. With my cousin, a year and a half younger and now an established architect, we spent the whole day soaking in the beautiful and clear water of the Bay of Silence which unfortunately was not like now: there were very few dead bodies, under the friars there was a large colony of Posidonia and the sand was still alive, populated by every type of marine creature. Just out of the water the rocks were covered in muscles and limpets and in the pools of water there were numerous crabs and other creatures of the shoreline. It often happened that a small octopus would cling to the feet of a shy bather who put his feet in the water or that a small blenny or another small rock fish would remain prisoner in a pool because of the tide. For us who were about ten or eleven years old, it was an infinite joy and fun: we knew every inch of our bay both in the sea and out, we ran barefoot on the rocks up to the dam or swam among the posidonia exchanging the only diving mask to discover a spider crab, an octopus or check out the wonderful large castanets that we respected and whose presence we did not reveal to anyone. Those were the times when in the sea you often saw another great character from Sestri with his lancet who with a long harpoon fished octopuses but who stopped to talk and play with his octopus friend Mario whose story is absolutely true. Sorry if I get lost in my memories but coming back to us, my grandfather had taught us that in the water, just a few centimeters under the sand, lived the great world of bivalve seafood, namely clams, sea truffles, fasolari… With my cousin, in a short time, diving to a depth of about two meters rummaging in the sand with our bare hands, we managed to fish out enough clams and similar for an excellent plate of spaghetti that my grandmother prepared for us.
This was in fact a dish of Neapolitan cuisine that my grandfather had taught all of us and that my grandmother cooked masterfully. In our area in Sestri there was a great Neapolitan chef and restaurateur who, with his wife, smiling, pleasant and very kind, began to serve spaghetti with clams.
Even today, when I meet Mr. Gianagreco who opened the Don Luigi restaurant at the end of the sixties, I remember those days and thank him.
Recipe for 4 people:
Let's get back to us and spaghetti with clams, I'll describe the recipe as I like it:
About 350 grams of whole wheat spaghetti; one kilo of clams; two cloves of garlic, two ripe tomatoes, a good glass of extra virgin olive oil, a little white wine, chopped parsley.
I recommend opening the clams separately to avoid that a single one full of sand ruins the sauce, shell a part and keep the liquid. Then fry the chopped garlic in the oil, add the clams and the tomatoes cut into cubes. When the seafood has heated up, add a little wine, let it evaporate and add the well-filtered cooking liquid and leave to cook for about ten minutes. Add the pasta cooked al dente, mix it by salting it and serve it after sprinkling it with plenty of chopped parsley.
Enjoy your meal and here is the photo of the dish:
