Old School Spaghetti - With Clams From Cans

Oh, what the hell. And what else is there to do?

SPAGHETTI WITH CLAMS

I call it old school, because it's like the spaghetti with clams I used to make when fresh clams were unavailable to me (hey, I lived in San Jose for 16 years!). So - what follows is my recipe for spaghetti with clams (okay, some are cockles) (and all clams are from cans).

Here's the recipe (it serves 2);

225 grams good spaghetti - don't use anything but real spaghetti (yeah linguini works), not that shit made out of lentis or corn or quinoa. I happen to use Setaro, because it's good. As a matter of fact, for a dish with canned clams that's old school, Ronzoni or DeCecco are fine.

1 can Bumble Bee (nee Snow's) chopped clams (they also make a minced product, but...no)

1 can Matiz Berberechos - that's just a fancy word for wild cockles, but good ones - you can eat these right out of the can, which I don't suggest for that Bumble Bee product.

You know how you know it's just a fancy word for cockles (other than the fact it's translated for you right on the front)? Well, they also package a can like this - either is okay with me.

1 nice, big, fresh (yeah, farmer's market stuff) clove of garlic, sliced thinly, like from that scene in Goodfellas, where Paulie is slicing the garlic in jail. If you haven't seen Goodfellas, stop reading.

Crushed red pepper - let's say 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon

Handful of chopped flat parsley (yeah, farmer's market), chopped even finer than I did
Extra virgin olive oil - let's say 3 - 4 tablespoons
Salt - you won't need much, the clams are a little salty
Pepper - if I have to tell you how much, and if I have to tell you freshly ground...oy

Fry up (yeah - sauté) the garlic and crushed red pepper and some of the parsley in the olive oil until the garlic is lightly browned; not burnt, cause that'll fuck your dish up. Add the juice from both cans to this pan, and drop your spaghetti (linguini?) into another pan in which you're boiling about 3 liters of water, lightly (in this case lightly, because as I already told you, the clams are salty) salted water. Reduce the clam juices while the spaghetti is cooking. Since I use Setaro spaghetti, that takes about 10 minutes.

When your spaghetti (linguini?) is almost done, remove it with tongs into the pan where you are making the sauce. At the same time you do that, add all the clammy stuff to that pan, and a little pasta water - like 1/4 cup. Now, keep tossing that spaghetti (linguini?) and clams and sauce till almost all the sauce is absorbed - if you don't think there's enough sauce in the pan, this is where your pasta water comes in handy, and also why you don't just dump the pasta into a colander in the sink (well you can, but save some of that water). Add some pepper. Taste it - see if it has enough salt - if it doesn't, what are you smoking?

Plate the stuff (tongs!), scrape up the schmutz (if any) that's left in the pan, and put it on top of the spaghetti (linguini?), and sprinkle the rest of your finely chopped parsley on top.

A crisp white (with a little salinity) would work. From Lazio. The Veneto? Spain. Even a sherry. You figure it out - I've already done enough, and let's face it - it's really too hot to make spaghetti (linguini?), but...

P. S. If you are lucky enough to have access to good, fresh clams (yeah, farmer's market or better), then you could make a dish like this...

Happy As A Clam

Or, if you just want to fancy this one up a bit, add a little (okay, 1/4 cup) of the wine you're drinking to the pan after the garlic is browned, and let it evaporate before adding the clam juice. You won't taste the difference, but you'll think it's better.

By the way, if this isn't better than 99% of the spaghetti (linguini?) with clams you've ordered in a restaurant (well, unless that restaurant is in Rome or Venice or the restaurant is using fresh clams and the pasta station really knows what they are doing), don't blame me. After all, look what happened to Joey Gallo after his spaghetti (linguini?) with clams.

Buon Appetito!

One or More Reasons I Loathe Delivery Apps

I confess - I loathe delivery apps.  I confess - I've never used a single delivery app for a single delivery of a meal. Years ago, when they (grub hub, seamless, door dash, uber eats, et al.) first were rearing their ugly heads, I had a friend who was an early adopter; I complained to said friend that all the apps would do would be to increase the cost to consumers, as well as to chip away at the meager profits of small restaurants. He didn't cook at home and he didn't care; case closed.

Oh sure - let's face it - I used delivery. But didn't we all back in simpler times, simply by calling up our local Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese/Pizza/sandwich/bodega place (A friend literally used to order Tab and cigarette delivery from her bodega - those were the days!)?  

I knew that when I ordered a bowl of wonton noodle soup, some stir fried pork with mixed vegetables (don't tell my rabbi) and some shrimp with black bean sauce from Tang Tang (now New Tang's Garden) on 76th and 3rd, it would arrive at our apartment practically before I'd hung up the phone,  And the guy would climb 4 flights of stairs to deliver it. We had a relationship.

I knew, for years after we'd moved downtown and started to order Saturday lunch sandwiches from Tiny's Giant Sandwich Shop, that it would always be the same guy who would deliver said sandwiches to us - without getting lost trying to find our building or apartment. We had a relationship.

And when my delivery guy from Noodle Village arrived with a sack full of noodle soup, some sandy pot chicken mushroom rice and a small order of stir fried greens with garlic, looking all sorts of disheveled, and I asked him if he was ok, his response was (I'll keep this clean): "Too much f*^%ing last night!" We had a relationship.

And those relationships now? Well, let's just say they've gone the way of rotary phones, touch-tone phones, talking on phones and black & white TV's.  I mean after all, if 95% of one's life is spent looking down at an iPhone while walking the crowded streets of NYC, or worse yet, riding on a damn electric scooter that gets dropped off and picked up via an app, what should I expect?  Delivery apps are here to stay, I guess. Doesn't mean I should like or accept them, does it?

Take a look at what the grey lady had to say yesterday (my guess is it's not just limited to France):

Food-Delivery Couriers Exploit Desperate Migrants in France

QuoteThese jobs have become more precarious,” said Jean-Daniel Zamor, president of the Independent Deliverymen’s Collective in Paris, a group that works on labor issues for couriers. “The fact that there is less money from the platforms has pushed poor people to outsource to people even poorer than them.

   

And The Wall St. Journal just weighed in last week, about the issues restaurants face with using the apps:

Some Restaurants Get Served in Delivery Boom

QuoteMany independent restaurants say they work with multiple online-delivery apps because they have become so pervasive; without them, they fear missing out on business. But that doesn’t mean they come cheap. Last year, Modern Restaurant Management reported that Uber Eats was charging restaurants a service fee of 30% of the bill. Similarly, a 2018 analysis by Business.com found select New York restaurants that opted for sponsored listings, in addition to delivery services, ended up paying a minimum of 30% to Grubhub.

Just who do you think is paying that 30% folks?

So, let's just say I was ahead of the curve in my dislike of this particular segment of the gig economy.  And let's just say that instead of Uber Eats, why not cook a meal or two at home?

P.S. Get off those fucking scooters, too!

Make Mine Mazemen, It's a Niche

I was thinking about my one blog post a year thing, maybe even blogging about it, then decided - fuck it....lemme just talk about mazemen, since I imagine within the next 12 months about 100 more mazemen places will have opened, in the 3 or 4 boroughs of NYC that matter.

But first, just as I wrote 5 years ago on this date, I need to point out I'm a lucky guy, cause  21 years ago (!), Significant Eater and I tied the knot, in a lovely ceremony, in the lovely city of Las Vegas, Nevada. So - Happy Anniversary to the love of my life! Here's to 21 more, and 21 more after that! And may our mazemen always be al dente...

Where was I? Oh yeah, mazemen.  Mazemen, according to some of the crap I've read, is the "dry style" ramen, which in my mind is kind of an oxymoron, since isn't ramen what we generally associate with a bowl of noodles - in some sort of broth? Be that as it may, I've been enjoying ramen for a long time. I remember there was some place in midtown, maybe 20 or more years ago, where a nice bowl of ramen could be had for lunch. And I was going to Japantown, in San Jose, CA way back in the early 80s, certainly indulging in my first bowls of ramen (while making my own avocado toast at home); but that was before butchers wore fedoras, and grain bowls were all the rage (are they still?).

Anyway, you can't walk more than a block or two in this town w/o stumbling over a ramen place. It's usually next to a poke place, which is next to a grain bowl place, if you get my drift. I expect that the poke places, and the grain bowl places, will, like every trend, all but disappear within a year or two, and the ramen places will thin out, but overall ramen is here to stay. And why not - ramen, made well, is delicious. But I (and many others I'm sure) have a problem with ramen; the broth is usually so insanely salty that I really shouldn't be eating too much of it. Also, and this is disgusting, sometimes it goes right through me, but let's not dwell.

So, enter mazemen, and the latest entry into that sweepstakes, a new place called Niche, on Delancey Street hard by the WillyB. Niche opened a few weeks ago, brought to us by the proclaimed ramen maestro Shigetoshi Nakamura, who is one of only 4 "ramen gods" in all of Japan! Pretty cool, and his ramen, from personal experience, is pretty damn good.

So I was itching to try his mazemen, and this week Significant Eater and I made the short walk up Clinton Street, past the new Trader Joe's/Target building, across Delancey, and settled into one of 14 seats (okay, stools) at the one long table running down the middle of the room. The lone server was awesome, because if there's one thing a server should do, it's to bring booze as quickly as possible, and that she did...

Sake and scallop @ Niche

I like the little vending machine sized cans/jars of sake, and these were just right for this meal. The scallop appetizer shown arrived very quickly, as did Significant Eater's app order, chilled Mapo tofu. Then, the main events...

Steak mazemen @ Niche

Yuzu dashi vongole @ Niche

On top, steak mazemen, delicious hunks of ribeye, smoky from torch grilling, along with menma and spinach. There's a little sauce at the bottom of the bowl, and when it's all mixed up, you end up with a really, really wonderful bowl of noodles. Just great. But even better, in both of our opinions, was the bowl of Yuzu Dashi Vongole, aka clam mazemen, literally one of the best renditions of pasta with clams to be found in this city.

To say we were pleasantly surprised would be an understatement - we were wowed! I certainly can continue to make ramen (below, top), or even mazemen (below, bottom) at home...

Jamon and pea ramen @ Hacienda Weinstein

Mazemen @ Hacienda Weinstein

But it's also nice to know that we can find mazemen (and yes, when necessary, ramen) this good, and just a 5 minute walk up the block.

Niche and Nakamura - 172 Delancey Street, New York