Mblah's Homemade Fettucini and Clam Sauce w/ Crusty Italian Bread

This is one of my favorite meals. My mom use to make it when I was a kid but she didn't make it often because my brother and sister didn't care for it too much. I loved it however

Mblah's Homemade Fettucini and Clam Sauce w/ Crusty Italian Bread

I made the pasta, sauce and bread all from scratch For anyone who has seen pics of my kitchen it was a challenge. Half way through making everything I had to throw in the towel and go to my fiancee's mom's house to use her kitchen and counter to roll the pasta out lol. My kitchen is SMALL! I have one tiny counter, but I am learning to work around it. I have a method for everything BUT pasta! I have nothing to attach it to but that will be remedied soon! I'm going to put a drop table on the wall in the kitchen. It will make a great cooking station and when I'm done just fold it up against the wall and latch it! Small kitchens wont keep me from doing what i love!!

Ingredients
10oz canned clams in brine
1 1/2 cup mushrooms, sliced (I used baby portabella)
4 tbs olive oil
2 tsp fresh chopped basil
1 tsp fresh chopped oregano
1 tsp fresh chopped Italian parsley
1 1/2 cloves of garlic crushed
1/4 cup diced tomato
1 onion finely chopped
3 tbs butter
3/4 cup of white wine
1 cup of milk
6 live clams (if you can find them, not needed for meal)
1 box of Fettucini pasta (I made my own)
S&P for seasoning

Directions
First soak clams in the milk for 1- 1 1/2 hrs, once done drain and set milk aside. Don't throw it away!

Melt butter in large pan with olive oil and then add garlic and onion, sautee til slightly brown. Add mushrooms and sautee a few mins then add wine. Cook til reduced on medium heat. Next add herbs, clams and clam milk. Cook til sauce thickens slightly.


For the live clams steam them til they open. If they are open when you buy them they are BAD do not use them! Fresh clams should be closed. Steam til they open fully and then set aside.


Boil pasta or make your own: Mblah's Homemade Fettucini


Then serve on a plate with sauce and garnish with the tomatoes and clams like so and serve with some Mblah's Italian Bread


This is a fairly easy dish (if you omit making your own pasta and bread of course). It does take time if you do it all from scratch but to me there is something about making things from scratch. I love to cook and really enjoy sharing it with others. I put love into my food when I make it! All my energy goes into it, it's like a high for me in a sense. It is what i love to do and it also helps when I'm stressed out.


Hope you enjoy! If you try it let me know how it turns out and share pics!

And one of my other pasta creations Mblah's Bow Tie pasta how to

Chef Blah

That looks so good
I love when you post recipes

I have a good recipe for clam sauce also

In a saucepan, in some olive oil, brown a few peeled garlic cloves.
When they're golden brown, to stop the browning, put in the broth from 2 cans of baby clams.
Simmer 5 min., remove garlic, save.
Put in the 2 cans of clams, mush the garlic through a garlic press, and put in also.
Put in some fresh or dried basil. I use a couple of tbsp of dried, if no fresh available, or a handful of fresh.
A bit of salt and pepper.
Simmer another 5 min.
Add 28 oz can of diced or crushed tomatoes, simmer, and if needed to thicken, add some tomato paste.

Serve over pasta or gnocchi.

reply to post by snowspirit


Ohhh that sounds good and gnocchi is my next pasta I'm gonna try! I have some clams left and everything else to make your sauce. I will have to try this

Thanks

OMG! That looks sooooooo good! I love clams and made a big pot of steamers for Christmas Eve. I threw a little corn meal in ice cold water, to allow the clams to spit out their sand, before steaming them.

I have never heard of soaking (canned) clams in milk before! But, it makes sense since creamy clam chowder is just so yummy!

reply to post by mblahnikluver


Hmmm..

I was wondering something...

do you have room for a small folding table for your kitchen?

Looks good as always girl!!!( the food)..

Originally posted by baddmove
reply to post by mblahnikluver

 

Hmmm..

I was wondering something...

do you have room for a small folding table for your kitchen?

Looks good as always girl!!!( the food)..

haha I wish I had room for that lol yea it's realllly small. Next to it is a big sink then stove and fridge. No extra room lol A drop table is the only option. Now if you didn't cook you wouldn't need a table, but I do and need to make pasta!

Haha

Thanks

Originally posted by windword
OMG! That looks sooooooo good! I love clams and made a big pot of steamers for Christmas Eve. I threw a little corn meal in ice cold water, to allow the clams to spit out their sand, before steaming them.

I have never heard of soaking (canned) clams in milk before!

But, it makes sense since creamy clam chowder is just so yummy!

Yea I milk helps take the "fishy seafood" taste that turns most people off to clams, mussels and even scallops. I usually kept the milk and use it in the cooking to the flavor is still there but not heavy and over bearing. It's just right

Thanks for the idea and lovely presentation, I believe that is what I will cook for my wife for Sunday comida. I picked up a can of baby clams recently with this dish in mind and have pasta I made earlier all ready to go. Live clams would be a problem to find but I do see frozen clams in their shells available, though I never tried to use them. I expect I can steam them open in the same manner you describe, and this should add a nice touch to the meal.

You also convinced me to also bake a loaf of homemade Italian bread to go along with it all, and I suppose I will make some green beans for a vegetable side dish as well. I am hoping I can easily find some fresh herbs to do this right.

My secret remedy for the "fishy" taste is to add a bit of tarragon to my seafood dishes. This also seems to work well for other foods that have a strong or "gamey" flavor.

Thanks, Mblah! S&F.

reply to post by Erongaricuaro


Ohh I love tarragon! I have a couple different kinds in my cabinet. I like French Tarragon for soups, stews and many other dishes with red meat mostly. It is a little different that regular tarragon. I buy it from an herb store that grows it and dries it. It likes a hot and sunny location so I might add it to my list of herbs to plant next month. I'm in FL and it's hot and sunny year round lol

Let me know how yours turns out!!

Thanks for your reply

To follow up on your request and let you know how mine came out I describe it here:

On Sunday I cooked the linguinni and clams for my wife and I and we both enjoyed it, although it was far different from your recipe and due to time and availability was short-cutted from your all-fresh approach. Because of that I made it more of a side-dish but it ended up taking center stage. Purists might have put me to a firing squad for the shortcuts but the end result was nevertheless good - "fantastic" would have to wait for a better occasion. I have been too busy remodelling the little house up the street I bought for just Tere and myself, our extended families can remain in the bigger homes when our little house with the large garden and patios is completed. Shopping for ingredients was limited to one visit to a nearby store. Still, Sunday I try to make a little bit special for just us.

The garlic they had available was too dried out and baby portabellos were not available this time. Fresh or frozen clams were likewise not available and though their mussels looked good it just wouldn't work for this. Fresh onions and tomatoes were all I bought and the rest were ingredients I had on hand. This is most often the case in deciding how to prepare something and my recipes will vary each time.

So, working with one can of baby clams, canned mushrooms, and granulated garlic I produced our meal. Omitting cooking details I'll just describe it. I used the juices from the cans and based the sauce in sour cream. Added to the sauce were diced tomatoes, onions, capers, and sliced some stuffed green olives. No wine was on-hand so I used about a tablespoon of brandy and sprinkled in some dried tarragon. I served this over some linguinni noodles I made with whole wheat flour and dried a week or so earlier - actually the Atlas machine calls this pasta cut "tagliatelle", if I recall correctly, but is the same cutter you used and this is close enough to linguinni for me. I topped this with uncooked tomato dices and sprinkled over some crumbly queso ranchero. It looked pretty enough when served.

The bakery next door - friends of mine, the bakery is closed on Sunday - had some bolillo rolls made the day before so I cut these up for garlic bread, topped with butter, granulated garlic, dried Italian herb mix, and more crumblings of queso ranchero and toasted the topside in the salamander unit over the stove so that the bread stayed soft while the butter, garlic, and toppings got nice and toasty and browned.

Because the linguinni and clams was not to be the big production I had hoped to make it I also put some chicken breast strips in the gas grill for the main attraction. Although the chicken was good my "side dish" of linguinni and clams still asserted itself and really became the main course afterall. My wife and I ate all the linguinni and only the chicken and bread got passed along to the rest of the family afterwards. This is not how we typically serve meals throughout the week but Sundays are our special times together, especially during periods like now when I am involved in large ongoing projects like this house remodel.

Yes, I did take some shortcuts with this and didn't take it as far as I often do with fresh ingredients. I did make good use of your own special ingredient, however, and included a lot of love which we both tasted and felt come through.