One Pot Meal: Tomato Clam Stew

On sunny weekends, Taylor and I will bike to the International District to grab groceries at one of our favourite stores, Uwajimaya. They've got such a great selection of fresh seafood and meats and have great sales! On this particular trip, there were little neck clams on sale for $2.99/lb, which is the cheapest I have ever seen clams at the grocery store. Secretly I was walking over to the tanks thinking, "I CANNOT WAIT TO GET MY HANDS ON SO MANY OF THESE LITTLE GUYS!!" Ok, that's a lie. I'm actually terrified of tanks full of fish (long story) and avoid them as best as I can, so I made Taylor scoop the clams out of the tank since the clams were surrounded but all these other tanks of fish. Yes, I am a wimp.


I still can't get over how beautiful these clams are! This was half of the batch of clams we used for the meal. The other half were manilla clams, which were on sale for $5.99/lb.


Ingredients - makes 4 servings

1 1/2 lbs little neck clams
1 lb manilla clams
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1 8oz can of chopped tomatoes (we used the kind with garlic & onions)
2 cloves of garlic
1 cup white wine
1/4 tsp fresh ground pepper
1 lemon


Directions

1.  Soak the clams in cold water for 20 minutes prior to cooking; They'll release all the lovely gritty stuff they've stashed in their shells.
2. Dice the cloves of garlic.
3. In a large saucepan, simmer the diced tomatoes, garlic, parsley, pepper, and wine for 15 minutes on medium-low heat.
4. Add the clams to the pan and cover with a lid to let them steam in the tomato bath. Remove the lid once clams are opened (should be about 10 minutes).
5. Squeeze the juice from 1/2 lemon into the pan, over the clams.


We ended up eating this with our favourite crusty bread from the market, dipping slices into the soupy tomato base as we devoured the clams. So yummy!

P.S. We never ended up finishing the full 4 servings of the clams from this recipe. Instead, Taylor ended up making a killer batch of clam pasta in a creamy tomato sauce with our leftovers, which he'll be sharing next up on the blog.