members recipes

A simple and delicious pasta dish, full of lovely fresh flavours. You can adjust the amount of garlic and peperoni to suit your taste, using a little less if you wish. You can also add a tiny bit of Sambuca to the pan whilst the vongole are cooking, which gives it a wonderful aroma with just a \'touch\' of aniseed flavour, but it isn\'t a must.

Ingredients
Serves 4

approx 400g spaghetti (or linguine)
1 kg of vongole veraci (Carpet clams)
a few tbsps of olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
1 -2 peperoni
1 glass of white wine
1 bunch of parsley , chopped

Method
1. Clean, then soak the vongole in a large bowl of cold water (1 hour), to which you\'ve added a a few tablespoons of sea salt. This will help to get rid of any leftover sand or debris that might still be in the clams. Lift them out of the bowl with your hands and hold them under running water for the last rinse, then set them aside.
2. Start cooking your spaghetti (Cook a little under al dente !)
3. In a large, deep frying pan heat the olive oil gently and add the peperoni and garlic slices. Fry gently over a low heat for about for about a minute or so.
4. Add the cleaned vongole to the pan, swirling them around gently a few times before adding the glass of wine.
5. Cook the vongole over a high heat, shaking the pan occasionally. After a couple of minutes they should have opened. Check the sauce for seasoning, adding a pinch of salt, if necessary. Before adding the pasta, check the vongole , discarding any that haven\'t opened.
6. Drain the spaghetti and add it to the pan, then toss the pan gently to coat the pasta with the vongole sauce. Take it off the heat, add the chopped parsley and leave it to rest for a few seconds to allow the pasta to soak up some of the lovely juices.

Serve just as it is and NO CHEESE PLEASE ! ;-)