Spaghetti with Clams and Mussels

The other week, I shared my Spanish Seafood Paella recipe with you.  When I buy the pot-ready mussels and clams for the paella, I buy them in a vacuum packed 1kg bag, and there are more in the pack than I need for the paella which means the night after paella is clam and mussel spaghetti night.

Spaghetti Vongole is spaghetti with clams.  You can also make this dish just with mussels, but I made it with both as I had them left over and didn't want to waste them.

Ingredients  (serves 4)
500+ grams baby clams (vongole, pippis)
500+ grams pot-ready mussels
300-400 grams spaghetti (wholemeal preferable)
1/2 cup 125ml dry white wine (or use water or stock)
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
3 tomatoes, peeled, de-seeded and diced
1 small red chilli,  seeded and finely diced (optional)
Extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO)
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
salt, pepper and lemon wedges to serve

Method

Prepare your clams and mussels.  I usually soak the clams in cool salted water for an hour, then rinse and drain.  The mussels are pot-ready and can go straight in.  Discard any that do not close when tapped.

Bring a large saucepan of salted water to a rapid boil, then add the spaghetti.  Cook for the recommended time with the water constantly at a rolling boil.  Set the timer - mine usually takes 11-12 minutes.  I'd run out of wholemeal, so used normal white spaghetti.

While the pasta is cooking, gently heat a small amount of EVOO in a non-stick fry pan, and  sweat the garlic for a couple of minutes.  Add the wine and turn up the heat.

With about 4-5 minutes to go on the pasta, add the clams to the fry pan and cover with a lid. Shake the pan from time to time.

With 3-4 minutes to go on the pasta, add the mussels to the fry pan and cover with a lid.

When the pasta is cooked, drain it.  Now you can either add the spaghetti to the pan with the mussels and clams, or if you are worried the clams have left some sand/grit in the cooking liquid, put the pasta back in the saucepan and add the mussels and clams to the pasta, then pour over some strained cooking liquid.  Toss through the tomatoes and chilli and season with salt and pepper.  Discard and clams or mussels that do not open.  Serve with lemon wedges.

It is good to have some crusty bread on hand to soak up all the juices.

Notes & Variations
You can also add diced zucchini (courgette) to increase the vegetables.
You can make it just with clams (vongole), just with mussels, or with both.
If I don't have any chillis, I use Chilli infused EVOO and drizzle it over at the end.
The quantities I've given are a rough guide.  Adjust them to suit your needs and tastes.
You can replace the tomatoes with tinned tomatoes if you want more of a tomato base, or you can leave the tomatoes out entirely and just use the wine and garlic.
To make the classic Moules Marinieres just steam the mussels as above, replacing the garlic with a couple of French shallots, diced, and add some thyme and a bay leaf. Serve with crusty bread or oven-baked fries instead of pasta.  You can also steam mussels in beer, like they do in Belgium.

Mussels in Brussels - well, it's actually Brugge in Belguim - June 2009

To learn how to purge (remove sand from) clams and mussels see the Sydney Fish Markets web site here.

Interesting Facts
Vongole is Italian for clams.
In Italy Parmesan cheese is never added to seafood.  It just isn't done.
Mussels need to steam rather than boil, so don't add to much liquid to the pan.  The mussels release their own liquid when they open which adds flavour to the dish.

Laundry Cupboard Sorted

Now this post shows you just what an exciting and glamorous life I lead sometimes.  Yep - I sorted out the cupboard in the laundry.

Now given that my laundry is the size of a postage stamp, the cupboard is a significant part of the room.  As a family of four, a substantial amount of clothes and linen pass through here on a daily basis, so I need it to be really organised.

I bought some storage containers from Ikea, so I could divide the shelves into compartments.  There is a bucket for washing, ironing, light bulbs, and one called 'Where is it?' for all those obscure things that you need but don't know where to put. 

Then there's all the buckets for cleaning and soaking.  The left side of the cupboard holds the brooms and mops.

I printed up labels for everything.  Come on - tell me I'm not the only strange person who has to do things like that.

I even sorted out all the batteries.

Finally, I had some new taps installed for the laundry trough and the washing machine.  Probably a bit pointless but so much nicer than the white plastic ones that were there.

So there it is, in all it's minuscule glory.

My Borough Market Seafood Paella

Whilst living in London, my family were fortunate enough to visit Spain where we ate the famous Spanish dish of paella several times.  Keen to recreate the dish when we returned to London, we headed to the Borough Markets where we bought a traditional paella pan and all the ingredients we needed to make our version of the dish.

Now I am not Spanish, and make no claims that this is an authentic or traditional dish.  It is just my version of the dish inspired by my trips to Spain, and by the wonderful produce available at the Borough markets, that I sadly no longer have access to.

Ingredients (for a 6 person pan)
Sofrito
1 Spanish onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
2-3 tomatoes, peeled, de-seeded and chopped
6 piquillo or piquante peppers (from jar, drained and chopped) or 1 red capsicum, diced
2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO)
Rice
1 1/2 cups Calasperra or Bomba, Spanish paella rice
3 cups (750ml) stock - fish or vegetable
100ml dry white wine (optional)
Seafood & Vegetables
You can use any mix of seafood you like, I used:
12 live clams (pippis, vongole)
12 pot-ready live mussels
1-2 tubes of calamari, cleaned and cut into strips
12 green prawns, peeled and de-vained with tails intact
a handful of green beans (or peas if you prefer)
Seasoning
1 tablespoon pimento (Spanish smoked paprika)
a pinch of saffron threads (1 teaspoon)
2-3 lemons cut into wedges
handful of parsley, chopped
salt flakes & freshly cracked black pepper

Preparation

• Get all of your ingredients together.
• Prepare your seafood.  I buy pot-ready clams and mussels, so they don't need much preparation.  I soak the clams in cold salted water for an hour or so, then rinse them just to remove any remaining sand or grit in them.  If your mussels aren't pot ready, you will need to scrub them and remove beards.  Discard any open mussels that don't close when tapped.
• Blanch the green beans - I put them in a pyrex bowl, boil the kettle, pour boiling water into the bowl and leave for 10 seconds, then I drain the beans and run them under cold water.  Blanching the beans just keeps them looking green when you cook them.  You don't have to do this step.
• Peel, de-seed and chop the tomatoes.
• Put 1 teaspoon of saffron threads in a small dish and add 1 tablespoon of boiling water or stock, leave to infuse.
• Place the stock in a saucepan and heat gently so it is hot when you add it to the paella pan.

Cooking
Heat the paella pan and gently sweat the onion and garlic in EVOO for 3-4 minutes.

Add the peppers or capsicum and the tomatoes.  Continue to cook slowly for another 3-5 minutes.

Add the paprika and stir.
Turn up the heat.
Add the wine and cook for a minute or so.
Add the warm stock and saffron and bring to the boil.
Add the rice and give it a good stir to make sure it is covered and evenly distributed.  This is the last time you will stir the paella so put the spoon away.  I usually add the calamari strips now.
Reduce the heat a little and cook the rice uncovered for around 15 minutes, until it is almost tender.

Arrange the clams, mussels, prawns and green beans (or peas) evenly around the paella pan.  You can press them down into the rice with the back of a spoon if you wish.

Cover with tin foil or a lid and cook for 5-7 minutes, until the mussels and clams open up and the rice and prawns are cooked.  You can turn the heat up for the last few minutes cooking time to ensure all the liquid is absorbed and a crust forms on the bottom of the pan.
Remove the paella from the heat and let it rest, covered for 5-10 minutes.

Squeeze lemon juice and scatter chopped parsley over the top before serving.  The idea is that when you serve the paella, you divide it into 6 'wedges' and each person should receive the same amount of rice and seafood.

Notes & Variations
Other seafood you can include - any firm white fish cut into pieces, cuttlefish in place of calamari, crab claws.

To add more flavour to your fish or vegetable stock, you can fry the prawns shells in a pan until they turn red.  Add your stock, and bring to the boil.  Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 20 minutes, then strain through a fine sieve into a jug or bowl.  Discard the prawn shells.  A good tasting stock is vital to make a good-tasting paella.

According to SBS Food, the perfect time to add seafood to paella is when enough of the stock has been absorbed to allow the rice to be seen.  A true paella isn't overloaded with seafood so the rice is the main feature, but we love seafood so we up the quantities.

Piquillo peppers are small red peppers grown in northern Spain, that are roasted, peeled, de-seeded and sold in jars. Piquante peppers are from South Africa.   They are not traditionally used in paella, but I like them.  When you bite into one, they taste sweet, followed by a mild heat.  Delicious.  Substitute with red bell peppers/capsicum.

If you can't get paella rice, substitute with risotto rice.

Interesting Facts
Firstly, Australians need to learn to pronounce it correctly.  It is not pay-ella, but  [paˈeʎa]  - the 'l' is pronounced more like a 'y'.

A good paella should have a crust of rice called the socarrat on the bottom of the pan.  This can be achieved by cooking the paella over a gas flame or open fire. Traditionally paella is a summer dish, cooked by men in a flat pan set over a charcoal or wood fire, outside.  We use a paella pan, and my husband cooks it outside on the BBQ, to ensure good heat under the whole pan.  If you don't have a paella pan, use a wide flat frypan.  You can also buy special paella gas rings to ensure heat under the whole pan if you have a gas burner.

This is a great dish for entertaining, and although my husband cooks it for me for my birthday or when he's at home on summer holidays, you don't have to save it for special occasions.

Making Paper Chains

I took part in the Christmas Good Mail Club late last year run by Sarah from Molly's Maison. The idea was to send everybody on the list a hand-written card and a little something special.  I chose to make Happy New Year paper that could be made into a paper chain.

I printed Happy new Year onto some parchment paper in different fonts - the fonts are from top to bottom - Callie hand, Engravers MT, St Nicholas, Chopin Script, One Starry Night, Angelic War and Eraser.  Most you can download free from DaFont.

I then used a deckle edge blade on my Fiskars paper trimmer to cut the paper into strips.  This gives a slightly crinkled edge rather than a perfectly straight one.

For some I punched stars in between the words.

For others I punched decorative edges.

Until I ended up with a pile of decorative paper strips, which I bundled together and popped into the card I made.

I kept a few for myself too.

You could easily apply any of these ideas to make your own paper chains next time you have a celebration.  They were fun to make.  I remember making paper chains in primary school out of coloured paper to decorate the classroom.  Did you?

To see more Christmas decorating, please visit my new blog DIY Decorator

I'm almost back from Holiday Mode

Hi all,

I didn't mean to be away from the blog world so long.  It just happened.  There was the mad rush before Christmas.

with lots of eating and drinking.

A week spent in Melbourne and Point Lonsdale for Christmas with my family.  It was 40 degrees the day we arrived in Melbourne. 

Time spent reading my new Christmas books.

Then it was back to Brisbane for the Brisbane International tennis.

Followed by a week at beautiful Rainbow beach. 

with more eating and drinking.

Now there are only 2 weeks of school holidays left.  There are books to cover and shoes to buy, then my husband will be back at work and the kids will be back at school, and the house will seem too quiet again.

I hope you've all had a great Christmas holiday and look forward to catching up on some blog reading over the coming weeks.  I need to hit the gym again.  I am living proof that even if you are on a low saturated fat diet, you can still put weight on when you decide to have happy hour at 5pm every night.  Maybe David Gillespie's sugar theory is right?

Loving My Sticker machine

I'm still having so much fun with my sticker machine.  I just wanted to share a little matchbox project.

I have been burning my Glasshouse White Christmas candle pretty much every night during December.  It smells so Christmasy.  I leave the matches next to it for easy lighting, but a normal Redheads pack is not very attractive, so I covered it.

Two pieces of gift wrapping paper through the sticker machine and then straight onto the matchbox.

That looks better.

Even the tea lights didn't escape a ribbon sticker.

Got to stop putting stickers on everything and go wrap some presents.

To see more Christmas decorating, please visit my new blog DIY Decorator