I had the women from work here for dinner the other night. For a long time I had planned to make it an Italian night, but hadn't quite decided what to cook. Something with spaghetti yes, but what else. Carbonara was on my mind for a long time, but then, when visiting the fish market one day, I saw that they had what we call hjerteskjell (heart shells, clams or vongole?). The boys were coming home for dinner that night, and I decided to use them as tester for a self made recipe using the shells together with some fish.
The dish was a success and I knew that I would make it again for the girls. I posted about the dinner over in The House in the Woods the other day, and a very interesting discussion about what to call the clams, started. Marco, the artist behind Glasshandmade, lives in Venezia and knows vongole very well. Now he has promised me to show me real vongole when I come to Venezia in June :-) And while waiting I keep on calling my dish Spaghetti Vongole
Spaghetti Vongole ala The Blue Café
spaghetti
"hjerteskjell"
white fish (my dictionary says wolf fish or catfish)
garlic
leek
lemon
olive oil
white wine
salt
pepper
make spaghetti as you always do.
cut andbraise the garlic in extra virgin olive oil, add sliced leek and a whole lemon cut into small pieces, dice the fish and add
steam the hjerteskjell in white wine and olive oil for a few minutes, just enough so that all the clams open.
find a beautiful bowl for the spaghetti, add the braised fish and vegetables, pour over the white wine from the hjerteskjell, decorate with the clams.
(......oh my! I need to work on my English for my food blogging........)
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I didn't play any music during the dinner, but while preparing it last week I enjoyed one of my favorite operas, Die Zauberflöte
