White Clam Pasta

Josh & Kandice: Happy New Year everybody! 2010 hopes to be a promising year for JK. We have a lot of events planned and new ideas that we’re going to post about. Thank you for reading our blog thus far and we hope that 2010 will bring more readers.

Spaghetti & White Clams

Ingredients:
8 oz Dried spaghetti
14 oz Canned clams, minced
Half-and-half or milk
2 tbsp Butter
½ cup Onion, chopped
2 cloves Garlic, minced
¼ cup All-purpose flour
½ tsp Dried basil or oregano, crushed
¼ tsp Salt
¼ tsp Pepper
2 tbsp Parsley, chopped
¼ cup Dry white wine
¼ cup Parmesan cheese, grated

Kandice: This week we made Spaghetti and White Clams from a new recipe book that Josh gave me for Christmas. I’m not usually a big seafood lover unless it has been battered and deep fried, so working with plain clams was a new idea for me.

Josh: Yeah … you should have seen her at the store. She was jumping up and down saying “Josh, this post is going to be so uuuhhhugh!” Her facial expression was completely rediculous.

Kandice: Well, what else was I supposed to do?! I like eating fried clams, but the picture on the can looked so gross! I honestly didn’t know if I’d be able to stomach working with the clams.

Josh: Ha ha ha!

Kandice: You shouldn’t be laughing you’re not a big lover of clams either!

Josh: Yeah, well … (silence) … The first direction that we had to follow was to boil the pasta in a large pot. We cooked it until the pasta was al dente; meaning “tender but still slightly chewy.” We then drained it and set it aside.

Tip: The best way to keep pasta from sticking together once drained is to drizzle a little olive oil on it. (Unfortunately we didn’t find out this tip until after the fact so our pasta stuck together alot.)

Kandice: Next we had to drain the clam juice from the canned clams. We drained the juice into a measuring cup so that we could determine how much milk would need to be added. The total amount of liquid was to total 1 ¾ cup. We had about ¾ cup clam juice so we added 1 cup of milk.

Josh: I then took the butter and melted it in a medium sausepan. While the butter had been melting, Kandice had chopped the onion and I minced the garlic. These ingredients were then sautéed with the butter until golden.

Kandice: We then stirred in the flour, oregano, salt, and pepper. Then added the cream mixture, which was cooked until thick and bubbly! I then got to chop and add the parsley, the clams, and the wine.

Josh: This was the first time that either of us has ever cooked with wine so it was interesting to see how it would affect the recipe.

Kandice: Once the sauce was heated, it was time to serve! Josh didn’t really care for the dish, but Abbie and I enjoyed it.

Josh: The book that I got Kandice has alot of really nice recipes.

Kandice: And lots of pretty pictures, so you can see what it's supposed to look like, in a perfect world.

Josh: We would highly recommend the book if you can find it. It's called "Pasta; simply delicious recipes".

Kandice: Thanks again for reading our weekly post! We hope that you come back for seconds next week!

Josh: Also, feel free to e-mail us at jkdailyspecial@gmail.com, to suggest recipes, comment on the blog, tell us about your experiences in making our dishes, or just to chat with us!