1. At least an hour before you plan to cook this dish, we need to clean the clams. See how to
Prep and Clean hard shell clams for instructions on that. And once your clams are clean you can leave them in the refrigerator in a colander placed over a bowl with a damp towel on top for several hours or more.
2. Before you start cooking, make sure all your ingredients are prepped and ready to go:
- Measure the oil and butter and put it in the pan you are using for the sauce
- Peel and chop the garlic and add to the pan
- Add fresh ground black pepper to the oil, butter and garlic in the pan
- Measure the chile flakes and add to the pan
- Measure out 1 c of wine in a 2 c container
- Separate the canned clams from the juice and add the juice to the wine, reserve the clam meat (if there is any grit, strain the juice and rinse the clams, inspect the clams for small pieces of shell). If you don't want to use the canned clams or can't get good quality canned clams, add an additional 1/2 c bottled clam juice, white wine or water.
- Juice 1/2 lemon and add the lemon juice to the wine and clam juice mix
- Chop the parsley
- Figure out how many minutes you are going to cook the pasta after you add it to the boiling water (in my case, per the box it was 10 minutes to al dente so I cooked it 8 minutes)
3. Add 3 1/2 quarts of water and 2 T of salt to a pot large enough to hold the pasta. Bring the water to a boil over high heat.
4. Once the water is boiling add the pasta to the water. Set the timer for 8 minutes and stir the pasta occasionally. As you can see in the pictures below, DeCecco calls for an Al dente cooking time of 10 minutes, so we are cooking it 8 minutes here because we will finish it up on the stove while we are waiting for the clams to open and the sauce to be finished. If you don't have an Al dente cooking time, cook it for about 2/3 to 3/4 of the called for time.
5. Once the pasta has been cooking for 2 minutes, go ahead and turn the heat on medium under the oil, butter, garlic, ground black pepper and the pepper flakes. Cook until the garlic is fragrant but do not brown the garlic. It should take 2-3 minutes to accomplish this.
6. Add 1/2 of the wine, clam juice and lemon juice and 1/2 of the parsley to the pan and bring to a boil over medium heat. This should take 1-2 minutes.
7. Once the liquid is boiling add the clams and once it is boiling again, reduce the heat to medium low and cover. Make sure the heat is high enough that it continues at a low boil while cooking the clams. We need to generate steam to cook the clams.
8. When the pasta is done, drain it in a colander and add it back to the pan you cooked it in along with the remaining wine, clam juice and lemon juice mixture and the canned clam meat. Turn the burner to medium low and cover the pot. Stir the pot occasionally to make the sure the pasta does not stick and that it is coated with the liquid mixture. If you're still not ready after about 2 minutes, turn the heat off. We're not trying to cook the pasta any further.
9. As soon as the clams open turn off the heat under the sauce pan.
10. Portion the pasta into serving bowls and cover with the clams and the sauce. Top with the remaining parsley and you are ready to serve.