cook: clams and squid ink linguine

In my quest to eat what we have, I cooked clams left from the feast of seven fishes a couple days ago still at back or the coldest part of the fridge (clams and quahogs can last 7 days in cold enough temperatures outside the ocean) and squid ink pasta in the pantry drawer. I knew from Christmas Eve that I had to soak the clams in very cold salty water. Just look at all the sand that they spit out. In a hot cast iron in which there was butter, garlic, olive oil and wine, I placed the clams until their shells opened.

 

With the lid over the steaming clams, it was only minutes before they opened and released their ocean liquor into the hot cast iron. And then I placed the clams separately into a bowl, so I could cook the linguine sauce.

  

The linguine sauce was just a matter of cooking down all that clam broth and adding some heavy whipping cream to thicken. In the meantime, the squid ink pasta boiled for 7 minutes.

Lastly, toss the pasta in the sauce and top with clams.

T'was a supper of shucking and slurping and waxing nostalgia for a childhood of foraging for clams and quahogs on the Connecticut coast, and that's that for clams and black pasta for 2025.