This recipe is based on a dish in the Soby’s New South Cookbook. Here’s everything you need.

Rich & Creamy Cheese Grits

• 1 1/4 cup white, stone-ground grits
• 2 1/2 cups low sodium chicken stock
• 2 1/2 cups water
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 cups extra sharp cheddar cheese, finely grated
• 1 cup heavy cream (or half and half)
• 1/3 pound bacon, diced
• 1 green bell pepper, finely diced
• 1 red bell pepper, finely diced
• 1 large shallot, minced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1-2 tablespoons butter, as needed
• salt & pepper to taste

Bring the Chicken stock, water, salt and pepper to boil in a pot. Take the pot off the heat and slowly whisk in the grits so they don’t lump.

Return the pot to the heat and set it to low. Simmer for about 20 minutes (according to the package instructions), stirring occasionally to make sure the grits don’t burn. While the grits are cooking, chop the peppers and mince the shallot and garlic.

Next, chop the bacon into small rectangles and cook over medium-high heat until all the fat is rendered and the bacon is crisp. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and pour off all but two tablespoons of the bacon grease. (I like to sprinkle a little brown sugar on the bacon pieces while they’re still hot, but that’s not really part of the recipe)

Return the pan to the heat. Add the chopped peppers to the pan along with a tablespoon of butter and a pinch of salt. Cook for about 6-8 minutes until they’ve softened. Add the shallots and garlic and cook for another 3-5 minutes until the garlic is starting to brown.

If you let things stick to the bottom of the pan, deglaze it with a little white wine and cook off the excess. Pour the medley into a large, shallow baking dish.

As I’ve said over and over again, you really should grate your own cheese if you have the time. The pre-shredded stuff they sell at the grocery store just doesn’t melt and incorporate the same as freshly grated cheese. I don’t know the science at work, I just know that’s how it is. So shred two cups of extra sharp white cheddar.

By this time, the grits should be about done. Off the heat, add 1½ cups of the cheese to the grits and stir well until there are no visible lumps. Next, add the cream and incorporate.

Finally, pour the grits mixture into the baking dish with the pepper medley and stir well. When it’s nicely mixed, season to taste with salt and freshly ground pepper. Top with the remaining cheese and bacon pieces.

It’s not really necessary to bake this dish, but I always seem to warm it in the oven until it’s time to eat. It comes out great every time.

NOTES: When cooking grits like this, it’s better to err on the side of too much salt in the boiling water/stock mixture. You can always diminish the saltiness with extra cream and cheese, but it takes a lot of extra salt to add flavor to the finished dish.

Although I used bacon in the recipe above, I usually make this dish with a cup or two of cubed ham steak. I chop and fry it in a little olive oil and butter until it caramelizes. As soon as it’s finished cooking, I pour half of the ham into the casserole dish and incorporate it with everything else. Next, I add a tablespoon of butter and a teaspoon of brown sugar to the pan and stir so that all the remaining ham pieces are coated evenly with sweet caramel. I use those pieces as the topping.

If you want to use this recipe as a base for shrimp and grits, you just need to cut the cheese down to 3/4 cup and incorporate it all with the grits. Next, cook a pound of shrimp in the bacon grease with a tablespoon or so of Cajun seasoning (I usually mix equal parts Old Bay and Tony Chachere’s). When they’re just opaque, add a tablespoon or two of butter to the pan and a quarter cup of heavy cream. Stir well and pour the mixture over the grits. The shrimp will finish cooking in the residual heat of the casserole. Top with the bacon and some chopped, fresh sage.

Here’s everything you need:

Roasted Garlic Spaghetti

• 2½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 head garlic, roasted and mashed
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• water, as needed

We roast a lot of garlic in my house. Whether its for hummus or garlic butter, it’s an easy and healthy way to add a smoky taste to a dish. All you have to do is scalp the head to expose the cloves, drizzle it with a little salt and olive oil, and roast it in a foil pouch at 400° for about 30 minutes. It’s done when the cloves are soft and golden brown.

When it’s cool, you squeeze the cloves out of the bulb.

Next, use the side of your knife to mash the garlic into a paste.

Just like last time, you make a well in the dry ingredients and add the wet ingredients.

Mix it all until it holds together (it may need more water or flour), knead it a couple dozen times, and let it rest under a wet rag for about fifteen minutes.

Press it until it’s the desired thickness. On my machine, I dial it down to the third setting.

Finally, you pass it through the cutter. My pasta press makes angel hair pasta.

Toss the spaghetti with flour so it doesn’t stick together. Let it cool in the fridge until the salted water is boiling rapidly. Cook the noodles for a few moinutes until they’re al dente and toss them with a sauce. I just quickly roasted some shallots, garlic and cherry tomatoes in a sherry reduction and tossed it with some fresh herbs from the garden, some finely grated parmesan cheese, and my homemade spaghetti.

It came out pretty good, but the wife and I agreed that we couldn’t really taste the roasted garlic in the noodles. Sometimes we thought we did, but we weren’t sure if we were just imagining it. Next time I’ll double the amount of garlic. If I still can’t taste it, I’ll just stick with the basic egg noodle recipe.

We froze about a third of the dough. I think we’ll play around with some free-form pastas next.

After my long and frustrating experiment in homemade bread making, I was leery of starting a new hobby that involved flour. Had I known that making pasta from scratch was so easy, I would have started years ago. To make basic egg noodles, here’s everything you need:

Homemade Linguine Noodles

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 eggs
• water, if needed

I could have used the stand mixer to knead the dough, but I always think it’s worth doing things the hard way at least once to know what ‘too wet’ and ‘too dry’ looks and feels like.

Pour the flour on a clean working surface. Run your fingers through it to break up any lumps. Make a well in the middle and add the wet ingredients.

Fold everything onto itself until the mixture starts to bind. I had to add a couple of handfuls of water to get the dough to bind so I could knead it properly. After it was well formed, I covered it with a damp towel for about 15 minutes to let the flavors meld.

Next, I used a dough cutter to break off 1/4 inch pieces, one at a time. Using the press, you run the dough through on the widest setting. You keep adding flour and folding it over onto itself until it takes on a reliable shape (meaning there aren’t any bits hanging off the edges anymore).

Then you run it through the press, narrowing the width with each pass until it reaches the desired thickness. It can get pretty long. This is one of those times where having a kitchen island on wheels comes in really handy.

Finally, you pass the dough through the cutter. My machine cuts linguine/fettuccine and spaghetti noodles.

You shake the fresh pasta strands with a little flour so the noodles don’t stick together and repeat the process until there’s no more dough. That’s pretty much it. My dough ball made enough pasta to fill a 9 x 9 inch casserole dish, or enough to feed four people comfortably. I left the noodles in the fridge for about 6 hours until dinner.

Fresh pasta cooks really fast. You just bring a pot of heavily salted water to a rolling boil and add the noodles. Stir occasionally to keep the pasta from sticking.

After a few minutes, they’re done cooking. I figured, what better way could there be to eat fresh, homemade pasta than in a carbonara?

This was the best pasta alla carbonara I’ve ever made, even though –gasp!– I used bacon instead of guanciale or pancetta. The wife was very pleased with the texture and taste of the noodles, which is a big deal because she seems to have texture issues with everything that I like these days.

Next time I’m going to experiment with some eggless noodles and flavored pastas.

I got this simple recipe from the Whole Foods website. Here’s everything you need:

Honey Glazed Carrots

• 1 pound baby carrots or young carrots with green tops, peeled and greens trimmed
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 ½ teaspoons apple cider vinegar
• salt & pepper to taste
• flat-leaf parsley for garnish

Bring about an inch of water to boil in a pasta pot. Meanwhile, peel the carrots.

When the water reaches a rolling boil, steam the carrots for 8 minutes. I like my carrots pretty soft, so I let them go for about 10 minutes.

In a large skillet, bring the honey, butter and vinegar to a simmer over medium-low heat. Add the steamed carrots and sauté until the liquid reduces to a glaze and sticks to the carrots. I like to add the parsley early so a little of the bitterness cooks off.

When the carrots are about done, add a big pinch of kosher salt and about 8 turns of the pepper mill and stir to coat evenly.

We just ate these with our fingers. They were gone in a flash.

This dish was very good. Next time I’ll triple the recipe, cut down on the honey a little (proportionally), add a half cup of white wine, and maybe substitute a little champagne vinegar for the cider. Chopped sage would probably be a good garnish too.

I’ve recently prepared a mushroom burgundy sauce, some veal picatta, and I’m planning to make some chicken saltimbocca (which is very similar to chicken prosciutto). I have different blog posts for each of these recipes, but all of these dishes are essentially the same. Sure, you substitute different meats, wines and flavors of stock, but you basically recycle the cooking process… pound the meat down to 3/8 of an inch or less, season with salt and pepper, dredge in flour, fry in olive oil/butter mixture, sauté garlic and shallots, deglaze the pan with wine, add stock, reduce sauce and serve. If you want to make the sauce richer, you add a pat of butter. If the sauce is too rich, you dilute it with a little cream. You can add all kinds of additional ingredients like herbs, vegetables and fruit, but the basic cooking process is redundant. It’s the culinary equivalent of pairing different colored shirts and shoes with the same gray suit. You’re wearing pretty much the same thing you did yesterday, but your outfit looks totally different to everyone else.

These dishes are easy to cook, taste delicious, and never fail to impress when served to dinner guests. Here’s everything you need for this iteration:

Chicken Marsala

• 1 pound (or less) chicken breast, pounded thin
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons low sodium chicken stock
• 1 cup marsala wine
• 1½ cups button or crimini mushrooms, sliced
• 1 shallot, minced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 4 tablespoons butter, divided
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• all-purpose flour for dredging
• salt & pepper to taste
• chopped chives to garnish

To make this dish, you must use real marsala wine. If you buy that little bottle of marsala cooking wine in grocery store, you’ve already failed. Run to the liquor store and buy a bottle of the real thing. Marsala is a fortified wine, so it’ll last about a year in the fridge. The bottle in the picture above cost me $6. I’ve paid up to $15 for really good marsala before. It did in fact taste better than the cheaper stuff, but what’s most important is that you buy the real thing.

Chicken can disintegrate when flattened too much. I usually just buy the pre-sliced chicken cutlets at the store and tenderize them a little at home. If I was having people over and wanted to impress them, I’d buy whole, boneless, skinless breasts, butterfly them, and flatten them gently with my fist. The chicken fillets would be huge and hard to work with, but they’d look and taste really good. Either way you do it, you begin by seasoning the chicken with salt and pepper. Next, dredge the cutlets in flour and shake off the excess.

Heat two tablespoons each of olive oil and unsalted butter over medium/medium-high heat. Cook the chicken pieces until they’re brown around the edges. They’ll finish cooking later in the sauce.

Let them rest under foil on a plate so you can keep them warm and reserve whatever juices accumulate.

Melt the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter and add the mushrooms to the pan. Toss them while they soak up all oil and butter so they coat evenly. Resist the urge to add more oil and butter and leave them alone long enough to turn golden brown around the edges. When they’ve gotten some color, add a big pinch of salt and shake well.

When the mushroom start to release their juices (and expel the olive oil), add the minced garlic and shallot and a pinch of freshly ground pepper. Don’t walk away. As soon as the garlic starts to brown, deglaze the pan with the wine. Once the bottom has been scraped clean, add the chicken stock and stir to incorporate. When the liquid has reduced by about a third, turn the heat down to medium/medium-low and return the chicken (and juices) back to the pan.

It takes experience to know when the sauce is done. It took me a long time to learn that when the meat is in the pan, it looks like you still have a lot of liquid left to reduce. You don’t. Also, the simmering bubbles make the liquid look more thin than it is in reality. You need to take the meat out of the pan to finish the sauce. The trick is to keep testing the stickiness/thickness of the liquid. Dip a wooden spoon in the sauce and see how much sticks to the back. If you can run your finger across the liquid and your mark remains clean when you shake the spoon, the sauce is done. Season to taste with salt and pepper. It can cook down too much, so err on the side of thinness, if that makes sense.

Remove the marsala sauce from the heat and pour over the chicken. Garnish with fresh chives and serve immediately.

Much to my dismay, the wife’s not too fond of mushrooms. It’s a texture thing. But in this particular case, it means I get to hog all the toppings.

The worst veal scallopini piccata I’ve ever eaten was at an Italian restaurant in a strip mall on Woodruff Road in Greenville, SC. I was served a bowl of water-thin sauce that was composed of about 80% white wine. After timidly provoking the yellowish liquid with my spoon, I dredged up a few chunks of thickly sliced veal. They were more elastic than a popped balloon and about as tasty. Needless to say, I haven’t gone back.

There’s no authentic recipe for veal scallopini piccata, at least not as far as I know. I’m not a purist anyway. Nevertheless, there are a few steps in the cooking process that are essential. To begin with, you must pound the veal or else it’s not scallopini. Also, you need to dredge the cutlets in flour so the sauce will thicken. Finally, the sauce must include chicken broth, white wine, capers and lemon. The amounts may vary and people are free to add or substitute other ingredients. But if you stray too far from the basics, you’re not really making picatta anymore.

Here’s everything you need for my version of the dish:

Veal Scallopini Piccata

• 4 veal cutlets, pounded thin (about a pound or less)
• 1 cup low sodium chicken stock
• ½ cup white wine
• ½ large lemon (or 1 small one), seeded and sliced into rounds
• 1 tablespoon capers, rinsed
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 small shallot, minced
• 3 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
• 4 tablespoons butter, divided
• 2 tablespoon olive oil
• enough flour for dredging
• salt & pepper to taste

I always try to buy pre-flattened cutlets. Veal can be pretty difficult to pound really thin. Your butcher probably has a machine like a pasta press he can run it through. Publix is good about selling pre-flattened veal cutlets that don’t need to be prepped beyond rinsing them off and patting them dry, but you pay for that convenience.

Season the scallopini with a little salt and pepper. Next, dredge them in flour and shake off the excess. Resist the urge to cut them into smaller pieces. They’ll shrink when cooking.

Heat two tablespoons each of olive oil and butter over medium-high heat. When the butter is foaming, add the veal. Shake the pan at first so the flour doesn’t stick to the bottom. They cook really quickly. You’re really just browning them around the edges. You’ll add them back to the pan later to simmer with the sauce.

When the veal cutlets are nicely browned, remove them to a plate or cutting board. Add the shallots and garlic to the pan and sauté for a couple of minutes until softened.

Add the white wine to the pan and use a wooden spoon to deglaze the bottom. Once it’s clean, add the chicken stock, lemon slices, capers, most of the parsley, and mix well. Reduce it by about half and then add the veal back to the pan. reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer until the sauce just begins to coat the back of a spoon. Don’t cook it down too much or else it’ll get too sour (from the lemon and capers).

When the sauce is nicely thickened, remove and plate the veal. Take the pan off the heat and add the remaining two tablespoons of butter. Stir until the sauce is smooth. If you think the sauce tastes too sour, then add a little cream and maybe some more butter. Butter makes everything better.

Season with salt and pepper and drizzle over the veal. Garnish with the lemon slices and the remaining parsley and serve immediately.

I really love this dish. As far as the cooking process goes, there’s not much difference between piccata, marsala, saltimbocca, et al. If you can cook one dish, you can cook them all. The wife’s not as fond of picatta as I am, but she humors me. I served this with some roasted eggplant and she cleaned her plate. That’s the real barometer for success around my house.

NOTE: I only cooked two cutlets but made enough sauce for four. I like my scallopini swimming. So don’t be surprised if you follow this recipe and don’t have as much sauce for your cutlets as I did in the picture. Typically, piccata sauce barely coats the veal, almost like butter spread on toast. It tastes great that way.

Here’s everything you need:

Grilled Greek Chicken

• 2 large chicken breasts, halved and pounded thin (or 4 small chicken breasts)

Citrus Dressing

• 1/3 cup olive oil
• Juice from 2 lemons
• Juice from 2 limes
• 3 tablespoons fresh Greek oregano, chopped
• 5 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt

This is a really easy dish to make. You just finely chop your oregano and garlic and mix it with the remaining ingredients to form a kind of vinaigrette.

Next, you pound your chicken so that it’s the same thickness throughout. All the cooking stores sell expensive stainless steel mallets for this process. If I was going to flatten meats for a living, then maybe I’d buy one. Instead, I just use the bottom of my fist and a ziplock bag. With your hand, you can really feel when the meat is softened and starting to tear. I use this method whenever I flatten chicken or veal for schnitzel, paillard, marsala, picatta, saltimboca, parmigiana, etc. (I really need to get those recipe on this site)

Once the chicken is flattened, you pour half of the dressing over the cutlets and coat both sides. Let me stress that you can’t dip the chicken in the dressing or you can’t use it again later. Salmonella and all that. Let the chicken cutlets rest in the refrigerator for twenty minutes or so. They really don’t need to marinate for very long. This dressing packs a lot of punch.

Grill the chicken over medium-high heat. They only take a couple of minutes per side, so don’t walk away.

Finally, let the chicken cool for a few minutes and then pour the rest of the dressing over them.

If you have some leftover dressing, it’s good on pretty much anything. We used it to add some zest to our grilled corn and carrots.

I’m not really a purist when it comes to food, but I am when it comes to this dish. I’ve only ordered carbonara at a couple of restaurants because most chefs throw some bacon in a pre-cooked alfredo sauce and call it carbonara. That’s like putting cream in seafood gumbo and calling it chowder. The best version I ever ate came from a tourist trap in South Beach that had a guy in ancient Roman armor standing on the curb. I don’t know why more restaurants don’t serve the real stuff. It can’t cost them more than a few bucks to make?

Here’s everything you need:

Spaghetti Alla Carbonara

• ½ cup guanciale (or pancetta), cubed
• 1 large (or 2 small) eggs
• ½ cup freshly ground cheese (parmesan or pecorino or both), divided
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• ½ pound spaghetti noodles

It’s hard to find guanciale (tender Italian bacon made from pig jowls), so it’s acceptable to use pancetta as a last-resort substitute. Have the butcher or deli attendant slice off one or two ½ inch thick rounds and just chop it into cubes yourself. If you live in some unmapped backwater and can’t get ahold of any pancetta, then go ahead and use bacon – but not anything that has sage or syrup or sugar added. Chop up a few pieces of thick-cut slab bacon.

As far as cheese goes, you can’t use the shredded parmesan that comes in the resealable bag. It’s just won’t work. You could use the powdered stuff in the plastic shaker, but why not take a couple of minutes to grind some fresh cheese? There should be a panel on your box grater that has tiny, pointed holes meant for grinding cheese and spices. You know, the side you’ve never used? Just scrape the parmesan over that side until you have a half cup of crumbled cheese. Watch your knuckles.

I don’t know why, but I get a little tense when I make Carbonara. Like stir-frying, everything happens really fast. And like baking, it can all be ruined at the last second. If you overcook this dish, the eggs will scramble. If you undercook it, you run the risk of salmonella poisoning. Like Goldilocks, you have to find the cooking method that’s “just right.” To begin, drop your noodles into a pot of boiling, salted water. Once the noodles get wet, the clock is ticking. You have about nine minutes, depending on the thickness of your spaghetti.

Cook the pancetta/guanciale cubes over medium heat. You want to brown them on all sides and render the fat. Resist the urge to turn up the heat.

While the pancetta/guanciale is cooking, beat the egg in a bowl. The more air you incorporate into it the better. Finally, add half of the parmesan cheese to the bowl and mix well.

You should never be stationary during this cooking process. Either you’re stirring the noodles so they don’t stick together, shaking the pan to keep the guanciale/pancetta from sticking, or mixing the egg and cheese mixture to make it fluffier. When the spaghetti is about done, add a big ladle full of the pasta water to the pan and scrape the burnt pieces off the bottom. This will help disperse the flavors.

By this time, the pasta should be finished cooking. Strain it and immediately pour the cooked noodles into a serving bowl (preferably one that’s been warmed in a 220° oven). Next, add the contents from the pan to the serving bowl and give it a quick stir. Now comes the tricky part… Carefully pour the egg mixture onto the noodles, stirring the entire time. I usually get the wife to drizzle it in a slow, steady stream while I stir the noodles, kind of like what we do when we make mayonnaise by hand.

The egg will temper and be cooked by the residual heat from the noodles. You’ll know you’re doing it right if the egg mixture gets thicker. Once you don’t see any more raw egg, add the rest of the cheese and the pepper. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve immediately. If the egg scrambles, you’ve failed.

The egg is tempered and safe to eat when it gets thick like a yellow/cream colored gravy. Here’s a closer look.

Some people add the egg mixture to the pan and stir for a minute before taking it off the heat. That makes it cook a little faster, but I don’t recommend that method for your first attempt. It’s too easy to scramble the egg. Mix everything in the warm bowl and leave the oven on. If the egg doesn’t seem to be tempering properly, put the whole thing into the oven for a few minutes, stirring occasionally. That will bring it up to the right temperature without running the risk of ruining the dish. Once you know what proper Spaghetti Alla Carbonara is supposed to look and taste like, you can try to to cook it on the stove in the guanciale pan. Here’s a tutorial.

I‘ll confess that I sometimes add other ingredients to my carbonara , like herbs, crushed red pepper, garlic, shallot, shrimp, etc. It’s very good with added flavors, but you need to master the original recipe before you try to get creative. And remember that if you add butter and cream, it’s not Spaghetti Alla Carbonara anymore. It seems like everyone thinks pastas need to be buried in sauce to taste good. Sometimes less is more.

Here’s everything you need:

Homemade Basil Pesto

• 3 big handfuls of fresh basil
• 2-3 cloves garlic, depending on the size
• 1/2 cup parmesan cheese
• 1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted
• As much olive oil as needed to mix the ingredients (maybe 1/3 cup)

If you don’t have an herb garden, pesto can be relatively expensive to make. Pine nuts cost a pretty penny and those little containers of prepackaged herbs are a rip-off. To save some money, it’s fine to substitute spinach for 2/3 of the basil and use toasted almonds instead of pine nuts. One thing you can’t substitute is real parmesan cheese.

To begin, lightly toast the pine nuts over medium-low heat in a nonstick pan. The nuts contain their own oil, so you don’t need to add any. They can burn quickly, so shake the pan often. Some people sauté the garlic with the nuts. I don’t, but it’s not a bad idea if you’re turned off by raw garlic.

Meanwhile, chop the parmesan into cubes. You just want to make it easy to fit everything into the food processor. If you have a big, expensive food processor, you can probably omit this step. With my tiny machine, I end up with big chunks of garlic and cheese if I don’t prep everything beforehand. When the nuts are toasted, drop all of the ingredients into the food processor. Put the heavy stuff on the bottom.

Pour the olive oil through the holes in the lid and process until the whole mass starts to move. I like my pesto a little chunky, so I don’t add too much oil. Others like it swimming in oil and processed smooth. You can also add a little lemon juice and crushed red pepper to give it some zip.

Finally, season the pesto to taste with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper and toss it with some pasta. Garnish with freshly grated parmesan cheese and a little more olive oil.

Here’s everything you need:

Pasta With Clam Sauce

• 1 pound pasta, cooked according to package directions
• 2 (6.5 oz) cans Doxsee/Snow’s minced clams, stock reserved
• 3/4 cup white wine
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1 shallot, minced
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 3 tablespoons fresh herbs, chopped (oregano, thyme, parsley, etc.)
• Juice from half a lemon
• salt and pepper to taste
• chopped herbs, lemon zest and parmesan cheese for garnish

This ingredient list might seem long, but you should already have most of this stuff in your kitchen. Also, if you’re not a big fan of olive oil, then you should cut down the amount in this recipe. I like an oily sauce.

Clams and mussels can get rubbery if they cook too long. That’s why when you order a bucket of steamers, they’re out in just a few minutes. Steamers are usually flavored with a thin, buttery broth. That’s kind of what I was going for here, but to make a sauce that’ll stick to pasta, you need to thicken it up and reduce it. To do that, you cook the sauce and add the minced clams at the last minute. Start off by chopping all of your ingredients.

Warm the olive oil in a pot over medium heat. Add the shallots and crushed red pepper and sauté until the shallots are starting to turn brown, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until nicely browned, but not burnt.

In a bowl, mix the wine, clam stock and flour with a whisk. This is the main flavoring for your sauce. It’ll taste terrible at this stage, but it’ll be sweet and smooth when it cooks down.

Pour the wine mixture into the pot and mix well. Add the herbs and simmer over medium-high heat until it’s reduced by about two-thirds. You want to thicken the sauce and cook off the starchy flour taste. When the sauce coats the back of the spoon a little, add the clams and the lemon juice to the pot. Simmer them for a minute to release their flavor and then add the butter off the heat. Stir until it’s just incorporated so that it stays velvety. Finally, taste and season the sauce with salt and pepper. If you like a thicker sauce, add a little cream and shredded cheese (and put the pan back on the heat). But remember, this isn’t supposed to be a seafood Alfredo.

By this time, your pasta should be about done. Strain the noodles and add them to the pot with the sauce. Make sure all the noodles are coated with the clam sauce or else they’ll stick. Garnish with fresh herbs, freshly grated parmesan cheese, lemon zest, and freshly ground black pepper.

I actually made a full portion of the sauce, but only used half of the pasta. I like a heavy sauce. I used the other half of the noodles to make a basil pesto for the wife. She hates clams.