Clams in Tomatoes and White Wine

Clams in Tomatoes and White Wine

Clams is one of the most flavourful seafood around, in fact this makes a good base for seafood stock like mussels as they give more of that seafood flavour than fish and shrimps.  I guess all mixed seafood dishes should have this in the ingredient list as it will really enhance the flavours of a certain dish.

Steamed Clam is the most common method of cooking this seafood where it is only cooked with a few amount of water and some herbs and spices but the similarity stop there in every region they have their own style of cooking the dish like Frace and Italy they usually cook this with butter and white wine which is a really excellent combination, they usually eat it like such or place them on top of pasta and use its juices as the sauce.

Now this recipe that I will be posting is one of what I always used to cook way back in Philippines sans white wine, I use chicken stock instead.  Little did I know that this dish is already existing in Italian and French cusines as the common way of cooking this shell fish in Philippines is “Tinolang Halaan” which is a soup version flavoured with ginger, having known that I started using white wine which enhances this simple dish further.

Ingredients

1.5kg fresh clams
1 cup pancetta or bacon, chopped
1/2 cup dry white wine
3 large tomatoes, chopped
3 stalks spring onions, chopped
1/2 cup parsley, chopped
1 tsp cornstarch dissolved in 1/4 cup water
2 tbsp butter
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 pcs shallots, finely chopped
1 tsp ginger paste
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

Method

1. Place clams in a deep bowl and soak them on cold water with 2 tablespoons of sea salt for 30 minutes, clams will start spitting out  water which makes it clean as it will also spit out any sand it may have inside.
2. Heat a heavy pan over medium heat, add butter. and fry and brown the pancetta.
3. Now add garlic, ginger and onions the saute
4. Add wine and bring to a boil.  Once boiling add clams (drained) and tomatoes, then cover pan and simmer for 3 minutes occasionally shaking the pan to cook the clams evenly.
5. Add the spring onions, parsley and dissolved cornstarch.  Cover and simmer for additional 3 minutes.
6. Season with and pepper.  You can place this on top of pasta linguine works best or you can use this as a viand which is paired with rice.