Seafood Spaghetti

One of my favorite main courses, suitable for every season of the year. The steps to make this great classic of cuisine are simple and quick.

Mussels, clams, shrimp, prawns, and squid are the stars of the sauce in this exquisite dish.

The spaghetti will be finished cooking in the pan with the sauce, creating the creamy texture that makes this dish irresistible.

Ingredients

Let’s go shopping

10.5 oz spaghetti
2.2 lbs mussels
2.2 lbs clams
10.5 oz squid (or cuttlefish)
8 scampi (or prawns)
10.5 oz cherry tomatoes
2 cloves garlic
1 bunch parsley
1.8 oz dry white wine
to taste salt
to taste pepper

Seafood risotto-style spaghetti

Tools

What you need to make the

2 Pans
1 Pot
1 Colander
1 Strainer
1 Knife
3 Small bowls

Preliminaries:

When you buy seafood, ask your seller if they have been purified. Once home, start cleaning the mussels and clams, which must be rinsed several times under running water and left in water.
Clean the mussels: scrape off any encrustations on their shells, then take each mussel with the beard facing out and pull it away by tugging downward.
In a rather large pan, heat the oil with garlic and parsley stems, and when it’s nice and hot, pour in the clams
Cover immediately with a lid and wait until they are fully open, it should take 3-4 minutes
In the second pan, do the same with the mussels.
As soon as both are open, remove the lid, and pour them into 2 containers, being careful to save the cooking liquid, which should then be filtered with a very fine mesh strainer.
Now with a bit of patience, start shelling 3/4 of the mussels and clams, leaving the rest with the shell.
Now let’s move on to the squid: cut off the head and remove the intestines. I don’t remove the skin because it holds all the sea flavor,
but if you don’t like it, you can easily remove it, then cut it into strips or rings as you prefer.
Let’s take care of the scampi: with scissors, remove the shell, and using a skewer, remove the intestinal thread. You can discard the shell, but keep the head and claws.
Lastly, wash the cherry tomatoes and cut them into wedges.
From now on, the recipe will be quick, so you can already put the water for the pasta on the heat, with very little salt.
Take a large pan, and sauté 1 garlic clove with extra virgin olive oil and parsley stems
As soon as the garlic starts to change color, pour in the squid, and cook for 5 minutes, then deglaze with white wine. Let the alcohol evaporate, remove the garlic and parsley stems,
and add the cherry tomato wedges. Now you can drop the pasta.
Add the scampi to the pan, mix. When the spaghetti is 3/4 cooked, add them to the pan, and..
complete the cooking by adding the cooking water from the mussels and clams, which, being already salty, will flavor the dish, that’s why you shouldn’t add much salt to the pasta, in fact, it’s better without.
At the end of cooking, add both shelled and unshelled mussels and clams.
Turn off the heat and season with chopped parsley and a grind of black pepper.
Here are the Seafood Risotto-style Spaghetti ready.
If instead of cherry tomatoes you would like to use tomato puree in the same quantity, the result will be this.