Linguine alle Vongole | School of Rocco Episode 8/ 6-Ingredient Italian Pasta

In this episode of School of Rocco, I’m showing you how to make Linguine alle Vongole — the right way. No cream, just a few real ingredients and tons of coastal Italian flavor.

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School of Rocco, Linguine alle Vongole, Italian pasta recipe, 5 ingredient meals, Rocco DiSpirito, easy Italian recipes, Hamptons cooking

Okay, we’re making everybody’s favorite pasta, linguini vong. The best dish ever invented. I know I say that about all my dishes, but this time I mean it. To make great linguini vong in America, you need two kinds of clams. You need chopped up chowder clams or quahog or little necks, whatever clam you can find that are large and fresh and hopefully local. And you need to shuck them and chop them. Ask your butcher to do that. And you need these cockals. They often come from New Zealand. Uh we don’t unfortunately we don’t have clams this small in America. We have to use New Zealand or Manila Philippines coacals. This is close to what they call vonglay in Italy which is the only clam they use for vonglay. These tiny little clams that come out of the Mediterranean. Okay. When you chop up your large clams whether they’re chowder cohog little necks, they’re going to produce a liquid. This liquid is something you want to preserve. It’s gold. Let’s cook the pasta. Okay. and a baa laasta. [Music] While pasta’s cooking, you can make this sauce start to finish. A little bit of garlic. Some people remove the garlic after it browns. I’m going to leave it in. I happen to like a lot of garlic in vonglay sauce. Olive oil. Olive oil is a very important part of this sauce. It’s an actual uh flavor providing element. It’s not just a fat source. All right. We’re going to lightly brown garlic. We’re going to add some parsley stems. Believe it or not, parsley has delicious flavor. We’re going to add the chopped clams before the garlic burns too much or browns too much. Stir, stir, stir. Mixy, mixy, mixy. You don’t want to cook the clams too much. You basically want to mix it with the parsley and garlic and delaze with a little bit of white wine. I like to add chili flakes at this point, just a little bit. This is a pasta you want to cook very al dente because this liquor or liquid from the clams is going to be what the pasta absorbs at the end of its process, infusing the pasta with its clam flavor. You almost always need salt. Sometimes clams are super salty, sometimes they’re not. You got to taste. I’m going to chop up some parsley cuz I’m going to garnish with some parsley as well. Believe it or not, this is a pretty simple dish as well. Not as simple as some of the other dishes I’ve shown you, but definitely among the more simple pasta dishes. I’m going to zest a little bit of lemon, too. I’m just going to do it right on top of this parsley. This is optional. It’s nice to have a little bit of this strong um very complimentary to a sea flavor uh acid in the form of lemon juice. All right. When this looks like this, which is essentially an emulsified chopped clam sauce, we’re going to add the clam liquor, clam juice. We’re going to add this to our chopped clams. And between the chopped large clams and the small clams, we will have enough clam flavor to make this taste like a great linguini vong. If you just use these cockals, you wouldn’t have enough flavor. If you just use the chopped clams, you would probably have enough flavor, but I think you would disappoint people who like to see clams in their linguini vang. I think it’s important to see the clam in the dish because um you know, it tells you what it’s going to taste like and it’s you know, the classic garnish. [Music] started to remove the parsley stems. You want your pasta to be pretty al dente. And you want some of that pasta water. This is a good rule of thumb for all pastas, by the way. Use that pasta water to help make it delicious and creamy. And now we’re going to do the marriage. We’re going to melt it. We’re going to reduce it. We’re going to glaze it. This part takes a lot of patience, you know, and you’re I’m sure many people lose their confidence here. When they they say, “Oh, my pasta been simmering for a while. Nothing’s changing.” But have a little patience here. You’ll start to see that the liquids will evaporate or be absorbed, I should say, and turn into this delicious new sauce. Okay, now is the time to add cockals. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 eight per person. Yeah, let’s put them all in here. Can’t hurt, right? Coacals. open at a different rate than the other clams do, which is why we don’t cook them together. It’s a good idea to cover them at this point. Now, I do something that is considered outrageous. I add butter to this. You’re not supposed to do that. In Italy, they don’t do that. They think we’re crazy when we do it, and they’re probably right, but they are not dealing with the same clams we are. The clams they have there are sweeter, richer, have so much more flavor. Um, they don’t need to add a little butter for richness. See, they’re already starting to open. See how they’re already peeking out? That’s how you know they’re fresh. I’m going to add a little tiny knob of butter. We’re going to add a little parsley, a little lemon zest, and a little lemon juice. And then we’re going to plate. [Music] All right, guys. Let’s taste this. In my restaurant, this is usually the number one pasta. [Music] So much good flavor there. Wow. Clams are miraculous. Clam, garlic, parsley, butter mixture. Absolute heaven. You got to try this.