What do you see in this pic? Clams, cockles or kedonia? Whatever you call them, they’re just as yummy! Scroll down for a fabulous pasta recipe that uses this delicious seafood!
My father has now gone to his homeland – the island of Limnos in the Northeast Aegean – to spend the summer there. He makes me jealous on most days by telling me he’s been to the beach for an evening walk and returned home with dinner – the odd big crab to enjoy with his ouzo!
During winter, My father made a new friend, Mr. Dimitris, who loves to harvest seafood from the seafront, here in our little town near Athens. As of the late spring, Mr. Dimitris would stop by to bring my father the odd thing, like the porphuras I mentioned in a previous blog post, or mussels. Now that it’s summertime, he goes harvesting every day and drops in about once a week, bearing gifts straight from the sea, this time to Andy and me, seeing that my father is away.
More often than not, he brings clams these days, much to my delight.
I’ve always had clams raw with a splash of lemon juice and bread. When I was a kid, my father was forever opening them for me with a knife and putting them on my plate saying, ‘Add plenty of lemon! It’ll kill the germs!’ It’s so embedded in my head by now I could never have them raw without the lemon haha. Actually, I suspect there’s truth in this as well!
Anyway, I decided to try something different this time. So I looked for pasta recipes online and found this awesome one for ‘Tartufi di Mare’ which means ‘Truffles of the Sea’ and that’s how the Italians call clams/cockles, apparently! Excited to learn something new, I looked into the recipe and it sounded wonderful. Clams, garlic, white wine, chilly… It just sounded perfect.
GET THE RECIPE HERE
I’ve now enjoyed this meal a couple times and it was such a success that I had to blog it, after making my own changes that is – i.e. I played with the secondary ingredients a little and changed the steaming procedure as well.
The pasta tastes as if it’s coated in butter. It’s just mouth-wateringly delicious. You’ll just have to try the recipe to see what I mean!
Note: You can use small-size oysters instead (called ‘clams’ in the UK or ‘achivades’ in Greece). These have smooth shells and can have various colors.
The summer has officially started here at last! The sea is a little cool but so inviting, and the sun is scorching hot! We’re having a heatwave right now, temps as high as 40 degrees C. My husband took this photo of me last weekend. That was our first swim near home so it was a quick trip. There are many popular beaches in west Attica that are edged with pine forests, and we’ll be driving out a little further on the weekends from now on. Kineta, Agii Theodori, Alepochori, Psatha, Porto Germeno. So many choices 🙂
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