Friday night is pasta with vongole since forever, and we have come up with lots of variations as the years have gone by. This combination, with chewy pieces of pancetta and some greens, might be the family favorite, but by no means is this canon. Throw some cherry tomatoes in with the garlic and omit the greens, or use both. Leave out the pork product if you want. You can double or triple the recipe as long as you divide the pasta between two big pots. The only real rule is to make sure the table is set and everyone is within earshot when the clams start to open; hot pasta waits for no one.
I wouldn’t like to say how often this is my supper and, indeed, lunch the next day when I eat it cold with a sprinkling of capers. For, although it does indeed serve two, I love it too much to keep it for company. It is, frankly, absurd how quick and easy it is to make. And yet it has such depth and complexity of flavor: the squid brings with it the briny kiss of the sea; the smokiness of the paprika, the heat of the chile and the hit of the garlic give it a gutsiness that marries so well with the smooth, creamy beans. I adore the Spanish judión beans, which are soft, thin-skinned, extra-large butter beans, though you can, of course, use regular canned butter beans, or soak and cook dried butter beans yourself.
Gumbo is my first love, all my love in one pot. A culmination of New Orleans’ history, the Germanic settlers who brought their spicy andouille sausage, the fishermen from the Canary Islands who furnished crabs, the Trinity, the House Spice, the Shrimp Stock. It is the first dish I learned how to make, start-to-finish, working through the stations of mise-en-place. Of course, for me back then, I simply experienced that as time spent in the kitchen with my mom and sister, stirring the roux until it darkened. I’m from a family of cooks; each relative has his or her dish. Uncle Herm is Shrimp Etouffee. Papa Winston is Curried Goat. Grandma Cassie is Chitlins. Tatiana’s cheesecake. and my mom has this. She’s so damn good at it -- and the ingredients so expensive for us growing up -- that she made seafood gumbo as a literal gift for my sister and I on Christmas. Better than any Playstation game, we ate it Christmas morning and for the next few days as the gumbo got better and better with age.
The brightness and color of this pasta with the meatiness of the scallop cannot be beat. You might want to add fresh greens or arugula to toss in the pasta to add texture and dimension. This can be made with tinned scallops or even sautéed ones that have been thawed from your freezer “pantry”!
When it comes to finding sustainable scallops, farmed scallops are basically sustainable, landing in the “Yellow-Green” range overall. Antibiotics and feeds are not used in scallop farming, there’s no affluence, and chemical use and ecosystem impacts are minimal. As with all tinned seafood, know your source and look into where the scallops come from and how impacted they are. I like using Ramon Pena‘s Small Scallops in Sauce!
Shrimp boulettes, or fried shrimp balls, might remind you of Thai fish cakes or Vietnamese shrimp on sugarcane. The shrimp is ground up and fried without any flour or cornmeal (shrimp is sticky enough to bind the vegetables together, so you don’t need to add any filler). Eat the boulettes as a snack with hot sauce, or put some on a roll with bitter greens, cocktail sauce, or spicy mayo to turn them into a sandwich. Either way, they are a great way to eat small fresh shrimp.
Shrimp spaghetti is to bayou kids what spaghetti and meatballs is to kids in the rest of the United States. This was my son Lucien’s favorite meal, which he would eat for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It’s a near perfect meal—simple, sweet, perfectly balanced—and it’ll feed a big family or a crowd of friends. The recipe draws from the Creole cooking technique of smothering tomatoes long and slow. This version is made with store-bought sauce, but you can certainly make your own tomato sauce and cook it down in the same manner. Homemade tomato sauce tends to be thinner, so you might have to thicken it a bit with tomato paste to get the right consistency.
Maple adds its woodsy sweetness to the sauce. Serve this over black, pink, or green rice for a visually stunning dish.
“We are geographically well off in Montreal, sitting on the shores of the seafood superhighway that is the St. Lawrence Seaway. From the Gaspé Peninsula to Kamouraska, Montreal to Portland, Maine, the seaway has a tremendous influence on what we eat.” – Book One
Chef Omar Allibhoy's friends and family say his is one of the very best seafood paellas they have tasted. The intensity of flavour in the stock you make will be the most important thing, as well as how wide your paella pan is. Believe it or not, it makes all the difference.
This is a great pantry standby. Borlotti (cranberry) or flageolet beans can be used instead of cannellini (lima) beans and dried or fresh cherry tomatoes can replace semi-dried (sun-blushed). The onion –and even the anchovies – can be left out altogether. Use good-quality tuna, olives and oil.