I was supposed to be posting Arroz Negre, but had to postpone to post my absolute favorite dish. It is healthy, light, and flavorful, and guess what, Italian.

I always loved it and ordered it always whenever on the menu, though it was never the same after once I had it in Zurich.

Watching Italy Unpacked on BBC, a show where famous chef Giogio Locatelli and art historian Andrew Graham- Dixon explore the art and traditional cuisine of Italy, the show went to the province of Venice and Giorgio Locatelli demonstrated how it should be done, and quite frankly for once in my life I copied the recipe to the letter without monkeying with it and mine came on the top of the one in Zurich.

The trick is to add nothing, no tomato, no cream, nothing but olive oil, white wine, dried chili, parsley, and garlic.

We bought the clams fresh in Kreutzberg on Saturday, called the best friend we had and had dinner.

Dinner guest was Amir, a good friend from very long time ago… I guess he liked it 🙂

Ingredients

• 75-100 grams of spaghetti per person
• 1-1.5 kilos of vongole
• 3 dried chilis
• three cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
• a bundle of parsley, roughly cut
• perhaps salt and pepper
• AND NO PARMASIAN

How to make it

• Bring a 1-1.5 litre of water to boil in a pot. Add salt after the water starts boiling (protecting your pot).
• Put some soft olive oil on medium-high heat until hot and add garlic and chili, fry for 1 minute or less. The garlic should not burn.
• Throw in the clams (do not forget to wash them first).
• Fry for two minutes and add a little bit of white wine.
• Let it boil for a minute or two and then cover.
• Throw the pasta in the boiling water and let it boil for 4 minutes.
• Open pan of clams and mix, remove the shells of those clams that have come off, but take no more than a minute or your spaghetti will be over boiled.
• Toss in the spaghetti and parsley. I usually add less oil in the beginning and add some  at this point. This lets you enjoy the taste of oil without having too much of it. This technique reduces the oil you need to half or even less without compromising the result.
• Deploy onto the plates.
• Enjoy your meal.

Coming up soon…

Creamy shellfish soup … That was the starter we had before the pasta.