I really enjoyed making and eating these Portuguese clams with vinho verde while sipping on a cold glass of Espiral, one of my favorite wines, and the reason I made this because I happened to have it on hand.
This meal was simple to make and didn’t break the bank. I get quite intimidated from cooking fresh seafood because of the cost, but the total cost of the entire meal, including an entire bottle of wine, came out to about $20. My boyfriend and I ate as if we were sitting outside, by the ocean, at a restaurant in Portugal and this was a Friday at 2 p.m. during a pandemic. This meal is guaranteed to bring you joy.
I soaked my pieces of toasted bread in the sauce first, made sure to scoop garlic onto every clam, and enjoyed the simple complexities of the total bite, fresh cilantro here, the aroma from the garlic there. And we did exactly as the recipe said after we ate all of the clams too, spread some salted Irish butter on our bread, and drenched them in the sauce. I’ll definitely be making this again!
And I plan on making some pasta for dinner and using the sauce from this for that. So, two meals out of one. You could even serve them together but I decided to just have clams, bread, and wine for lunch.
The directions are very straightforward and easy to follow. And here’s a weirdly useful tip, I used a toothbrush to clean my clams because I didn’t have a kitchen brush on hand, and it worked just fine. Also, Espiral sells for I believe $4.99 at Trader Joe’s. It’s effervescent, sour, very sippable, and goes perfectly with the briny clams. Serves 2 with a crusty baguette and salted butter, and a glass of Espiral.