Pasta vongole in Rosso

vongole veraci in a lovely tomato sauce with Rosso!
  • 4 persons
  • cooking time: 35 minutes

Ingredients

  • 1 sjalot, chopped
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 garlic clove, finely chopped
  • 1 tsp chili flakes
  • 50 ml white wine
  • 400 g peeled tomatoes
  • 2 leaves of fresh basil
  • 50 ml red wine vinegar
  • 400 g spaghetti
  • 1 kg cockles, washed
  • handful of flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
  • salt and pepper

How to prepare

I love a good pasta with vongole! How often have you seen this dish on a menu and not just in an Italian restaurant? But what are vongole? Vongole is the Italian word for some – though not all – venus clams. A single mollusc is called a vongola and a golden venus clam goes by the evocative name of vongola gialla. Vongole can also refer to vongole telline, a very small variety of clam, but usually when you get clams in pasta, they are vongole veraci, also part of the venus clam family. For this recipe we use vongole veraci in a lovely tomato sauce! Enjoy.

Preparation

  • 1 Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over a medium-high heat and add the shallot, garlic and chili flakes. Fry for 2 minutes till it is softened. Deglaze the pan with the white wine.
  • 2 Add the peeled tomatoes and squeeze the tomatoes. Add the fresh basil and red wine vinegar. Season with pepper.
  • 3 Heat the pan over medium high heat and cover the pan with a lid.
  • 4 Cook the pasta in a large pan of lightly salted water until it is al dente.
  • 5 Add the ockles to the frying pan and cover with the lid. Shake the pan and lift the lid regularly to check if the cockle shells have opened. Add the chopped parsley leaves after 3 minutes.
  • 6 Turn the heat off when the cockle shells have opened. Drain the pasta and add it to the cockles. Toss well, season with pepper and garnish with parslet.