March 19, 2005

Linguini and Clams Marinara

Description:
This is my friend Rick's recipe but he didn't want to post it for me, so he dictated it to me instead.

Edit: I've changed the recipe a bit after trying it out on my own. No pics yet. We ate it all up too fast. Maybe next time.

Ingredients:
1/3 c. olive oil
1 bell pepper (preferrably red)
1 c. mushrooms
4 or 5 cloves of garlic
1 can baby clams
1 can of crushed or diced tomatoes
keep some tomato puree on hand in case you decide you need it
1/3 bunch parsley (chopped fine)
salt and pepper (duh!)
cooking sherry
1/2 shot amaretto


Directions:
Pour about a 1/4 cup olive oil into a frying pan. Add chopped bell pepper (preferrably red) and sliced mushrooms. In a separate frying pan, sautee crushed (or chopped) garlic (4 or 5 cloves) in the rest of the olive oil.

Chop up parsley (about 1/2 of a bunch of curly, American parsley) while the peppers, shrooms and garlic are cooking. Don't add the parsley to the pan just yet, though.

Open can of baby clams, drain (save the water), and add the clams to the peppers and mushrooms (after they have cooked for at least 10 - 12 minutes). While the clams are cooking, you can add pepper but not salt. (Adding salt will make the clams harden.)

After you've browned the garlic to a light golden brown (no more or it will dry out) add it to the clams and vegetables.

(After the clams have cooked for about 5 minutes, then...) Add 1 can of diced or crushed tomatoes. (If you use diced, then add some puree in with it.)

Now you can add some salt, parsley, a little cooking sherry, and a 1/2 shot of amaretto (and some of the clam water).

Cook the pasta al dente (in furiously boiling water). (Put some salt and oilve oil in the water so that the pasta doesn't get sticky.)

Mix everything together (after having first rinsed the pasta off with hot tap water) and serve.

Eat with some pecorino romano cheese.

Back yard of the San Francisco house

"Aerial" view of the back yard. It might not look like much, but check out the next pic to see what it used to look like when we bought the place. (This was the text under the first photo in the album... back when it was on Multiply.)

We removed lots of junk as well as about 200 square feet of cement.

Lots of new plants will be going in soon.

When we first moved into this house, the backyard was pretty trashed. The people that lived here before us (renters who we knew) said they'd already done a great deal to improve the yard.

Once we were moved in, we threw away the miscellaneous dryer, the rotting gazebo, and lots of junk. Then we broke up most of the cement and planted a vegetable garden, an herb garden and some random flowers.

Unfortunately, once I had the twins I couldn't do much of anything back there and the yard fell back into disrepair.

Since we moved away, a friend of ours, Brett, has been hauling away more trash, laying grass, and preparing plant beds.