Thursday, May 17, 2018

Linguine With Red Clam Sauce

One of my most memorable meals was Linguine with Red Clam Sauce. It was many, many years ago, decades actually and I have no memory of where it was. My memory includes a gangster era dark, wood paneled restaurant with small candle lit tables with red checkered tablecloth. The red wine flowed and the jazz singer crooned!

I thought we had found an ideal spot in Vegas last year. The Bootlegger is a Vegas favorite that was favorably reviewed by CNN's Anthony Bourdain.  It had the requisite sultry jazz singer but the restaurant turned out to be over-lit and the tables were outfitted with white tablecloths. The paneling on the walls was not the dark shade I wanted. The food and service was "pretty good" but not good enough to replace my old memories of that long ago great meal. The Vegas meal included a glass of wine each and a coffee and liqueur after. The bill was $128 Canadian!

Tonight I found a recipe for this Red Clam Sauce and discovered I had all the required ingredients on hand. The recipe feeds six and there was only me as Norma hates garlic and I refused to leave it out. There will be plenty of leftovers.

It turned out to be delicious. Not too garlicky, not too tomatoy, just about perfect. I even had french bread to go with it. The total cost was well under ten dollars, a much better deal. No sultry jazz singer but I guess we must make the occasional sacrifice!


9 comments:

  1. A little pork sausage would spice that up. ;^)

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    1. A friend of mine used to put cut up pork breakfast sausage in her meat spagetti sauce, it was so unexpected but really delicious.

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  2. So what did Norma eat? Wow not liking garlic would be like of world without onions, and red and green peppers!

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    1. She had a deviled egg sandwich, a very poor substitution. I finally got her to taste a bit of it and she admitted it was good and that she could hardly taste the garlic. I am slowly getting her to experiment a bit with garlic and sometimes I do not tell her I put a little bit in. The trick is to make sure the flavours have time to blend together. The recipe said to simmer for 45 to 60 minutes, I gave it almost 90 minutes.

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  3. Never too late to enjoy a new taste! I used to hate anchovies. Now, with the right recipe, I love them. Too bad I wasn't there. I've always wanted to be a sultry blues singer. :)

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    1. I love anchovies on my pizza! And Chris, you would make a wonderful sultry Blues singer!

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  4. You should have fed Norma something better. Maybe she would have provided some of that jazz singing for you.

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