Spaghetti alle Vongole

This dish requires five ingredients and the discipline to use nothing else. No tomato. No cream. No cheese. What you keep out is as significant as what you put in.

The clams must be alive when you cook them. Their shells will open in the wine and release their liquor into the pan. This liquor, combined with good olive oil and the starch from the pasta water, creates a sauce that clings to each strand of spaghetti. You are not making a sauce and adding clams. You are allowing the clams to make the sauce for you.

Americans want to add things. They want to improve. Garlic bread on the side. Extra cheese. A squeeze of lemon. I tell them: the dish is complete. The Neapolitan fishermen who invented this were not lacking imagination. They understood that the sea provides its own seasoning. Your job is to listen.