I love pasta with Vongole, the regular version with garlic, parsley and chili is already lovely but this version with fennel and Ricard I feel is even a bit better! It’s just got that extra touch plus it looks amazing!
Ingredients for 2 pers.:
- 400 gr vongole
- fresh parsley
- fresh dill
- 1 fennel
- 1 lime
- cherry tomatoes
- 200 gr pasta flour
- 2 eggs
- olive oil
- sea salt
- 100 ml Ricard
- 100 ml cooking cream
How to prepare it:
As with all my pasta dishes, the recipe is written on fresh pasta, but I will also indicate when you can start cooking the dried pasta.
If you do make fresh pasta, start preparing the pasta dough, weigh 200 gr special pasta flour and mix this (in the food processor) with the eggs and a pinch of salt. Once the dough forms a nice scoop, put it in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes. Place a pan with water to cook the pasta on the stove, even if you are going to use dry pasta.
Sprinkle some olive oil and sea salt on the tomatoes with and place them under the grill.
Start by cutting the fennel, remove the green (don’t throw it away) and pull the different layers of each other. Cut into thin strips. Peel and chop the onion. Cut the chili pepper in half, remove the seeds and chop the chili pepper finely. Peel the garlic. Remove the root from the garlic. Cut the green of the fennel finely as well.
Also chop the parsley and dill. Squeeze the juice from half of the lime.
If you are using dried pasta, place it in the boiling water.
If you make fresh pasta, make sure your kitchen sink is clean and dry to roll out the pasta dough. Cover your kitchen sink with a little flour and roll out your pasta dough to a big rag.
Slice strips of the pasta dough that fit into the pasta machine. Roll the strips well and roll them up to 3 x through the machine. For this recipe I use the tagliatelle pasta variant. When you have turned the pasta, hang them on your drying rack.
Now add a lot of sea salt and a dash of olive oil to the boiling water for the pasta. The pasta should boil about 5 min. Put the pasta in the pan.
Now put a large baking pan with a big upright edge on the fire. Add some olive oil. Once the oil is hot, add the fennel, onion, the green of the fennel and the chili pepper. Bake until the fennel is glassy. Squeeze the garlic in the pan and add the lime juice. Bake for another minute, put the heat up high and now add the shells and the Ricard, let the moisture evaporate. Add the cooking cream after 2 minutes. Bring to the boil and add the finely chopped parsley.
Drain the pasta and remove the tomatoes from the oven. Put the pasta in a large serving bowl. Pour the sauce of the shells well distributed over it and divide the shells over the pasta. Sprinkle some finely chopped dill over it and garnish with the tomatoes.
This was good, but a little bit bland. If I make it again, I would add more fresh fennel, double the fennel seed, and maybe add some onion. I would also think about adding more wine or adding more flavoring to the broth. Finishing the pasta in the clam broth really develops a nice coating of sauce on the pasta, and the sprinkle of the fennel pollen over the dish is a really nice flavor punch. Use a high-quality Italian pasta if you can and splurge on a small tin of fennel pollen.