November 30, 2012 Dinner – Spaghetti with Manila Clams, Kale and Sugar Snap Peas Sauce and Baklava

November 30, 2012 Dinner – Spaghetti with Manila Clams, Kale and Sugar Snap Peas Sauce and Baklava

I went to Costco for a late lunch and bought a 5 lb. bag of manila clams ($16.65).  When I got home I put them in chilled water and ice and rode ten miles.  When Suzette came home we had cocktails and watched the news.  At around 6:30 Suzette said she was ready to cook dinner.  We selected spaghetti and Suzette started a pot of water to cook the spaghetti and asked me to go out to the garden to pick fresh kale and parley, while she started melting a stick of butter and crushed four or five cloves of garlic.  When the butter had melted and I had chopped two large stalks of parsley and de-veined about one cup of kale, Suzette added PPI white wine to the large enamel pot and started cooking clams while I stripped the tough stringy edge off 1 ½ cups of sugar snap peas.  After the clams were steamed in the butter and wine broth and shucked and the sugar snap peas cleaned, we added them and the kale to the large pot and Suzette covered and cooked the ingredients together for about ten minutes and then added back the shucked clams while I went to the basement and fetched a bottle of 2004 Handley Sauvignon Blanc. 

The wine was deep yellow in color and when we tasted it, it had huge character; like slightly wet smell of the microclimate of a Coastal Redwood forest, like the grove on Navarro Creek in Anderson Valley near where the grapes were raised; moist and herbaceous like freshly growing vegetation but also slightly rotting.  Handley Winery sits on the south facing hillside of Anderson Valley in Philo, California, next to Roederer Estates, so it is prime property.  We served large pasta bowls filled with pasta and the briny, buttery Clam and vegetable sauce floating in its soupy sauce.  The wine was a perfect complement because its strength of character and mature fruit that cut like a knife through the light, briny and buttery sauce.

After dinner, we served baklava from last night’s book club meeting with Greek yogurt and some of Suzette’s poached and roasted candied quince.  I drank a cup of mint tea made with dried mint from our garden.

Bon Appètit