Little Neck Clams with Miso & White Wine Sauce

What you're gonna need:
-Little Neck Clams - For 2 of us, I had just under 2 lbs. of clams.
-White Wine - I used some that had been sitting out for a couple weeks and was no longer in the rotation.
-Rice Wine
-Miso paste
-Garlic
-Onion Powder
-Flake Red Pepper
-Salt & Pepper
-Pasta  - I used a vegetable based bow tie

Total prep time - 15 minutes excluding the time to clean the clams.


Directions
1) Clean your clams. We were on the way out to run errands for an hour so I put them in a bowl of cold water while we were gone. I was hoping they might swim around if I was quiet enough but no luck. Clams are a very boring pet.

Voila - your clams are clean.





2) We were fresh out of onions so I used onion powder instead. I also added some flake red pepper, the kind you might put on pizza, and sea salt. In this picture is also the organic miso paste. Not pictured is black pepper.

I sliced up 3 cloves of garlic thinly and added to just enough oil to cover the bottom the wok.





3) Once the oil is hot, in go the seasonings.











4) About the same time I started my pasta. I saw this "Veggie" pasta at the store and decided to give it a try. The pasta is very orange. I boiled it about 10 minutes.









5) Once the garlic is browned, in go the clams. Because cold water in hot oil makes a mess and pops a lot, I tried to shake off the excess water before dropping them in the wok.

6) Here is the rice wine and white whine I used. The white wine bottle was about 25% full and I used all of it and added about a 1/4 cup of rice wine.

7) After pouring in the wine, I put in the miso paste. I used what is probably a heaping tablespoon as you can see in this picture. Just drop it in and give it a stir to break it up and have it dissolve into the rest of the sauce. You don't have to cover it but I did to keep the sauce from making too much of a mess on the black splash. I stirred about once a minute. You should see the clam start to open.

Once the clams are open, it's plating time!

8) Not too pretty but here we have the clams on top of the bow tie. It's hard to see in the picture but the sauce is all over the pasta and in the bottom of the plate. If any of your clams don't open, throw them away. If they're open a little, they should be fine.





A couple other pictures:

Just after adding the wines!

Your clams are open for bidness