Laura Banford: Easy International Cooking, where I'll show you how to go around the world without ever leaving your kitchen.
Today's destination is Spain, located on the Mediterranean Sea, Spain has a sunny climate and an easy breezy cuisine to match. Some important ingredients in Spanish cuisine are olive oil, shellfish, wine, and cured meat. These are some beautiful, tiny, manila clams and we're going to use all of these ingredients in today's dish, Pan Roasted Clams with Chorizo.
The ingredients for Pan Roasted Clams with Chorizo are: one dozen clams, one linked chorizo, one diced onion, one cup dry Spanish wine, extra virgin olive oil, one cup stock, Paprika, and Cilantro. The pieces of equipment you will need are: a heavy pot with a lid, a pair of tongs, and a couple of sharp knives.
Now I'm going to dice an onion. We're going to start with onions in the pan and it's going to make a nice base for the broth that we're going to use for the clams and chorizo. This is a piece of Spanish chorizo. Spanish chorizo is usually fully cooked and this is in this case, some chorizoes you have to cook and they come raw, but this is fully cooked. Chorizo has a casing and you'll need to peel the skin off. I'm going to dice it up. It's going to add a lot of flavor to our clam dish.
Turn on your pan to a medium high heat, get it nice and hot. I'm going to add some nice fruity extra virgin olive oil, choose a Spanish one for this. You can see by the simmer that it's already pretty hot, so we're going to go ahead and add our diced onion. Hear that sizzle?
I tell my students, make sure your pan is hot and that you hear the sizzle when you begin. If you start with a cold pan, you will not have satisfactory results. That's our onion. I'm going to follow quickly with a chorizo because we want this whole dish to be flavored with this delicious, salty, corky, cured meat. I'm going to add some crushed garlic, and paprika, and you want to cook the paprika, so you should start around in the oil. That will allow the spice to release all of its essence. This goes very quickly, so you want to make sure that you have everything ready once you turn on your pan.
I'm going to add our clams, as I said are the tiny manila clams. You can see by the size of them that they're going to cook very quickly, you get them all in. Be sure not to drop them as the shells could crack. As a shell cracks, the clam is no good. Now this is a pan roast, it's important to shake the pan, okay, and add our dry Spanish white wine. Wine is a great conduit of flavor, and a little touch of stock. I'm going to bring up the heat and cover our pan, and wait for about three to four minutes.
It's been about four minutes, wow! Look at that, that smells terrific! You see these tiny, little clams, have just about all open, let's start pulling them out. If you allow clam to cook too much it's going to be like rubber, and I'm talking within a minute too long, especially a clam of this size. These are tiny but they are beautiful.
It is enough for one serving I guess. Now I'm going to get the very important broth that has chorizo, wine, garlic, and onion and we're going to top with some cilantro and there you have it, Pan Roasted Clams with Chorizo. You'll feel like you're sitting in a sidewalk cafe in Malaga, Spain.
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