Pasta Con Almejas

Put a pan of water on to boil. While that’s happening, sort through your cleaned clams and if there are any that aren’t tightly closed, give them a sharp tap. If they don’t close, throw themaway. Put a large pan with a lid on a high heat and let it heat up. Finely slice the parsley stalks, then put them to one side and roughly chop the leaves. Peel and chop the garlic, quarter thetomatoes and get your wine ready.

Add the pasta to the boiling water with a good pinch of salt and cook according to packet instructions until al dente. About 5 minutes before your pasta isready, get ready to start cooking – you'll have to be quick about this, so no mucking about! Put 4 generous lugs of extra virgin olive oil into the hot pan and add the garlic, parsley stalksand a good pinch of salt and pepper. Crumble in the dried chilli and add the chopped tomatoes. Stir everything around constantly and just as the garlic starts to colour, tip in the clams and pourin the wine. It will splutter and steam, so give everything a good shake and put the lid on the pan. After about 3 or 4 minutes the clams will start to open, so keep shuffling the pan arounduntil all of them have opened. Take the pan off the heat. Get rid of any clams that haven't opened.

By now your pasta should be just about perfect. Drain and add to the pan of clams alongwith the parsley leaves and an extra drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Stir or toss for a further minute or two to let the beautiful seashore juices from the clams be absorbed into the pasta.Serve right away. No sane Italian would eat this dish without some fresh hunks of bread to mop up the juices. Beautiful!


• 1kg small clams,
scrubbed clean
• a small bunch of freshflat-leaf parsley
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 10 cherry tomatoes
• 250ml white wine
• 400g dried spaghetti
• sea salt and freshly ground
black pepper
• extra virgin olive oil
• 1–2 dried chillies