Spaghetti alle Vongole
I’ve been playing with the idea of preparing a Feast of the Seven Fishes for Christmas Eve ever since I read artist Ed Giobbi’s description of his family’s feast in one of my favorite holiday cookbooks, Christmas Memories with Recipes. Well, this was the year and what a feast it was.
The Feast of the Seven Fishes is a tradition in southern Italy, which explains why none of my friends from northern Italy were familiar with it. Basically, seven different dishes containing seven different fishes are served over the course of one long, lovely dinner.
The seven fishes represent the seven sacraments of the Catholic church. Not being Catholic, I wasn’t exactly sure what the seven sacraments are but we had Stephen, our resident Catholic, at the table. He was able to rattle them off just like that – Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Communion, Confession, Marriage, Holy Orders, and the Anointing of the Sick. Well done Stephen.
I have a few tips if you ever want to host your own Feast of the Seven Fishes. First, some people are nervous about cooking seafood. Don’t be. As long as you don’t commit the cardinal sin and overcook it, you’ll be fine.
Seven different seafood dishes is a lot for one cook to prepare so I enlisted expert help on Christmas Eve. Bones made the squid and a spectacular creamy oyster and spinach soup started with a homemade mahi mahi stock. Our friend Andy Mudie, a superb chef, prepared the final secondi of local fresh swordfish. Lynn brought the bubbly and Stephen was in charge of wine.
Think small portions. Otherwise your guests will start to run out of steam, and room, before the end of the meal. Same with the contorni, or side dishes. Keep them simple and light. Think slow – don’t rush it. Take time between courses (you’ll need to anyway, to prepare the next dish). This is a meal to be savored and lingered over for hours.
And don’t worry about the kids. They’ll find something they like. Audrey loved the pasta and she’s a huge swordfish fan. She wouldn’t touch the salt cod with a ten foot pole. And she was really disappointed that the squid tentacles weren’t served separately. My strange little darling only likes the tentacles. Anyway, I find that Christmas Eve is one night the children can’t wait to get to bed, so they likely won’t last through the whole meal anyway.
Our seafood menu and a recipe for the pasta I served follow. Buon appetito!
Feast of the Seven Fishes
Antipasti
Smoked Trout Crostini
Stuffed Mussels
Salt Cod & Chickpea Salad
Soup
Oyster, Spinach and Mahi Mahi Soup
Pasta
Spaghetti alle Vongole
Secondi 1
Stuffed Squid
Secondi 2
Fresh Local Swordfish, Asparagus and Fingerling Potatoes
Coffee, Grappa, Vin Santo, Biscotti
If you have fresh clams (lucky you!), you’ll need to scrub the shells with a brush and soak them in several changes of fresh water to remove any sand they may contain. And you should discard any fresh clams that don’t close when you handle them. That means they’re dead. None of this is necessary if you’re starting with frozen clams, as I did.
According to the great Marcella Hazan, there is no need to discard the clams that don’t open when you cook them. Those are apparently the freshest of the bunch. As Ms. Hazan points out, if you ate them raw on the half shell, how would you know which ones wouldn’t have opened had they been cooked?
A lot of recipes call for removing the clams from the shells before tossing them with the pasta. But I like the look of the clam shells in the pasta so I leave them as they are. Plus I think it’s more fun to eat them out of the shells.
2 pounds littleneck clams
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil plus extra for serving
2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced paper thin
1 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 pound dried spaghetti
2 tablespoons fresh chopped parsley
Put the clams in a large pan wide enough to hold them so they aren’t piled more than two deep (I use a large, fairly deep sauté pan). Cover the pan and put it on the stove over high heat. Cook the clams, turning them over or shaking the pan frequently. Remove the clams from the pan as they open and put them in a bowl. When all the clams have opened, drizzle them with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set it aside until ready to use. Pour the clam juice from the pan through a strainer into a small bowl (you should have about 1/3 to 1/2 cup of clam juice). You can do all this up to an hour in advance.
Put a large pot of water on to boil. Set a large skillet or sauté pan over medium heat (the pan needs to be large enough to eventually hold all the pasta, as well as the sauce). Add the remaining 3 tablespoons olive oil, garlic and red pepper flakes and cook for about 30 seconds. Don’t let the garlic brown. Add the wine and cook for about a minute, then add the reserved clam juice. Cook for another minute and then turn off the heat under the skillet.
When the water boils, salt it generously and add the pasta. Cook the pasta until it’s not quite al dente (it should be about a minute away from being fully cooked). Drain the pasta, reserving a little of the pasta water in a small cup. Turn the heat under the skillet on to high and add the pasta to the sauce in the skillet. Cook, tossing the pasta in the sauce until the juice has been absorbed into the pasta. This step is key – it allows the pasta to drink in the sauce so the flavors are absorbed fully into the pasta and not just hanging around on the outside.
Taste a strand of the pasta and if it’s not fully cooked, add a little of the reserved pasta water. When the pasta is done, add the clams back in and toss just to warm the clams through. Turn off the heat, add the parsley and serve immediately, drizzling each portion with a touch of extra virgin olive oil. Serves 6-8 as a first course or 4 as a main course.
