Few ingredients can make a pasta dish as tasty, refined and special as clams. Today, together with chef Vincenzo Esposito from Bommaré restaurant, we’re sharing a recipe that puts them on the spotlight: spaghettone with clams, bottarga, lemon and fennel-infused panko breadcrumbs. Keep reading for a step-by-step guide and enjoy this delicious recipe at home!
Ingredients
Serves 4
Here’s everything you need to prepare the dish:
- 400 g spaghettone (Italian pasta)
- 800 g vongole veraci (grooved carpet shell)
- Bottarga, to taste
- 1 unwaxed fresh lemon
- Candied lemon
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Garlic (crushed, with skin on)
- Chili oil
- Fennel fronds
- 50 g seasoned panko (breadcrumbs)
Step-by-step instructions to replicate the recipe
Start by sautéing the garlic (with its skin on) in a pan with extra virgin olive oil. Once it turns golden, add the clams. Let them cook for a few minutes, just until they open, adding a ladle of pasta cooking water and a bit of chili oil.
Once opened, remove the clams from the heat and set aside 12 clams with their shell, to use as garnish. Take the shell off the rest.
Meanwhile, cook the pasta in salted water until it’s al dente. Drain and transfer it to the same pan where you cooked the clams. Toss everything together for a couple of minutes, then add:
– the clams without shell;
– freshly grated lemon zest;
– fennel fronds.
Continue to toss and finish with a splash of raw extra virgin olive oil.
As for the panko: toast it in a pan with extra virgin olive oil, garlic and fennel until it’s golden and crisp.
The final touch is the candied lemon: blanch the lemon peel seven times in boiling water, then prepare a syrup with lemon juice, water and sugar. Once the syrup is ready, candy the peel in it.
Plating: the final touch
Looks are important too: before enjoying your dish, take a moment to give it the visual appeal it deserves.
Use a ladle and kitchen tongs to plate the spaghetti neatly. Once in place:
- – grate the bottarga over the top;
- – add the panko, candied lemon and the 12 clams in their shells;
- – finish with a garnish of fennel fronds.
Bommaré: the very best of the sea, at your table
This fantastic dish was created by chef Vincenzo Esposito of Bommaré restaurant, a place born to bring the finest flavors of the sea to the table: fresh catches from our Mediterranean waters as well as prized ingredients from more distant seas.
Bommaré offers a new take on seafood cuisine, blending tradition with contemporary flair: it combines classic dishes with more creative, modern proposals.
The fil rouge is the sea itself, supported by a professional service led by maître Gianluca Carbone.
Chef Vincenzo Esposito, originally from Torre del Greco, infuses his dishes with:
– Coastal Mediterranean cuisine;
– Seafood based on daily local catches, enriched by premium ingredients from more distant waters;
– Raw seafood dishes, shellfish, oysters, tartare, carpaccio, salt-baked and oil-poached fish
– And much more to discover.
