Alison’s Roman’s Clams with Green Garlic Butter and Leftover Wine
Cooked in a white wine and parsley butter sauce, Alison Roman's juicy clams are loaded with flavour. They can be served with beans cooked in the clam juice, or as is with some bread.
Introduction
Leftover wine is a foreign concept to most people (myself included), but in the rare event that you’re left with wine that you didn’t drink and it’s maybe spent a day too many in the fridge, there is no better use for it than steaming clams in it. Should this never happen to you and you still wish to make this recipe, you can certainly open a fresh bottle, but then you gotta drink it. This pretty basic parsley butter is the most complicated part of the whole recipe, and it can either be made by smashing the ingredients all together in a bowl or by using a food processor; the food processor will give you a really bright, vibrant green colour (and you won’t have to chop as much), but that’s really the only difference. The parsley butter is good with nearly every type of steamed, roasted, grilled or boiled seafood, but mingled with that briny, pleasantly metallic clam juice and some acidic white wine, it is truly spectacular. I would gladly sit down to a bowl of just clams for dinner, dipping hunks of almost-too-crusty bread into the leftover juices, but you can also add a tin of rinsed white beans to the broth at the bottom, letting them simmer for a few minutes in the juices and parsley butter before serving them alongside the clams.
Ingredients
| 120g (4½ oz/2 cups) | chopped parsley |
| 125g (4½ oz) | unsalted butter |
| 6 stalks | green garlic (garlic shoots), thinly sliced, or 3 regular garlic cloves, finely grated |
| kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper | |
| 1 tbsp | olive oil |
| 60ml (2fl oz/¼ cup) | dry, acidic white wine, such as sauvignon blanc or pinot blanc |
| 1.6kg (3½ lb) | small clams (vongole) or mussels, scrubbed and rinsed (see Note) |
| 440g (15oz) | tin white beans, such as cannellini, drained and rinsed (optional) |
| 1 | lemon, quartered, for serving |
| crusty bread, for serving |
Method
Note: When choosing your clams, the smaller the better here. The larger, chewier ones are great for things like chowder or pasta when they are pulled out and chopped, but to slurp one from the shell, you want them to be petite and tender. Littlenecks are a great choice (again, pick the smallest ones you can find, even if that means hand-picking them at the grocery store or fishmonger), but extra-small cockles would also be fun.
Combine the parsley, butter and 2 stalks of the green garlic (or 1 garlic clove) in a food processor. Pulse until the parsley is finely chopped and well incorporated into the butter. Alternatively, finely chop the parsley and garlic and smash into the butter using a fork. Season aggressively with salt and pepper; set aside.
Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the remaining garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until it turns bright green (or just before it browns, if using regular garlic) and has softened, about 3 minutes. Add the wine and cook a minute or two, just to take the edge off. Add the clams and cover. Cook, shaking the pan every now and then, until the clams start to open, 5–10 minutes, depending on the size of your clams and your pan.
Remove the pan from the heat and add the parsley butter, shaking to make sure it melts and gets into each clam. Transfer the clams to a large serving bowl or divide among four bowls.
Add the beans (if using) to the pan of buttery clam juice. Season with salt and pepper and let simmer over medium–high heat for a minute or two, just to warm the beans through.
Pour the buttery pan juices (and beans) over the clams. Serve with lemon wedges for squeezing, and crusty bread for sopping up all those luscious juices.
Do ahead: Green garlic butter can be made 1 week ahead and refrigerated.
Reviews
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