The dish in two lines
Spaghetti with clams and bottarga brings together two different kinds of saltiness: the sweet, marine taste of carpet-shell clams and the intense umami of grey mullet bottarga. The rule that decides the whole dish: bottarga is never cooked — it goes in off the heat.
Ingredients (serves 4)
- 320 g spaghetti
- 1 kg carpet-shell clams (vongole veraci)
- 30–40 g grey mullet bottarga (half grated, half thinly sliced)
- 2 cloves of garlic
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Fresh parsley
- Chilli (optional)
- Coarse salt only for purging the clams — the dish needs almost none
Method
1. Purge the clams (2–3 hours ahead)
Put the clams in cold water with a handful of coarse salt (about 30 g per litre, like seawater) for 2–3 hours, changing the water a couple of times. Throw away any that are broken or stay open when tapped.
2. Open the clams
In a wide pan, heat a little oil with one garlic clove. Turn up the heat, add the clams and cover. They open in 3–4 minutes. Turn off the heat, discard any that stay closed, shell half the clams and strain the liquid: it is the real sauce of the dish.
3. Half-cook the pasta
Drop the spaghetti into lightly salted water (clams and bottarga are already salty) and drain them 3–4 minutes before the end of the cooking time.
4. Finish in the pan
Finish cooking the spaghetti in the pan with the strained clam liquid, adding pasta water a little at a time, like a risotto. The starch binds everything into a light, creamy sauce. In the last minute add the clams (shelled and in shell) and the parsley.
5. Bottarga off the heat
Turn off the heat. Wait 30 seconds. Add the grated bottarga and toss with a drizzle of raw olive oil. Plate up and finish with the slices. If bottarga cooks, it turns bitter and tastes of stale fish — this is the mistake that ruins the dish.
The three mistakes to avoid
- Cooking the bottarga — always off the heat, always at the very end
- Salting as usual — the clams, their liquid and the bottarga are almost enough on their own
- Cheese — no parmesan or pecorino: they cover the taste of the sea
The right wine
A fresh, mineral Vermentino di Sardegna DOC: the acidity lightens the dish and the saltiness echoes the clams and bottarga. Our Entu, fermented in stainless steel in Villasimius, was made for this dish — serve it at 10–12°C. All the other pairings are in our Vermentino pairing guide.
Two kinds of saltiness, one dish. The sea twice — and a glass of wind to go with it.
Salude e trigu — Colline del Vento
