Clam

Let this creamy, herb-packed seafood dinner convince you that clams deserve a spot in your weeknight dinner rotation.

Rolling out and shaping this handmade pasta together is the fun part. Make the dough a day ahead, wrap in plastic, and keep chilled.

Chicken, seafood, glass noodles, and vegetables get briefly poached in dashi-based broth. Cutting the ingredients into uniform pieces ensures they cook in the same amount of time.

The clams give up all their essence in this rich coconut-based stock. It's great for curries, or use it as the liquid base for a pot of steamed mussels or littleneck clams.

With a mega-flame and a gargantuan pot, you can cook an ocean's worth of seafood in a fraction of the time it would take on the stovetop—without stepping foot in a steamy kitchen.

Weeknight chowder? Use clam juice. Weekend? It's worth making fish stock from scratch.

Fair to say we're pretty much obsessed with this nut-based (egg-free!) aioli. Try it with walnuts, too.

You can use any firm fish and fresh shellfish you like for this brothy stew. (A little crabmeat is a luxurious addition, as well.) Make the base a day in advance for a low-stress Christmas dinner.

You can infuse your shellfish with smoky flavor (and keep the smells out of the house) by throwing it on the grill. The lobster, shrimp and clams here are meant to be cooked at the same time and served with three sauces for mixing and matching. If you make the sauces in advance, the mixed grill comes together in less than a half hour. For a simpler dinner, you can absolutely make one type of seafood and one of the sauces; just make sure to increase the quantities as needed.

Clams are inexpensive, plentiful, easy to cook, and delicious. And you barely need a recipe—once they open, they're done.

Almonds are the new breadcrumbs. Their toasty flavor and crunch add just the right contrast to pasta.

You probably won't have to salt the sauce itself since the clams are so briny; taste right before serving.

Ipswich whole belly clams are steamers that have been removed from their shells and had the necks and membranes removed. And while you can get Ipswich clams from Ipswich, Massachusetts—where we get ours—these days the majority of whole belly clams come from Maine. Never substitute "clam strips" for whole belly clams. Clam strips come from surf clams, and they’ll be very tough if you fry them. This recipe is for a main-dish serving. If you want to serve these clams as an appetizer, reduce the quantities by half.

Most fish markets will sell you the bones you need to make the rich broth, but avoid those from oily fish like mackerel or bluefish, which will overpower the stew's flavor.

If paella escaped from Spain, sailed to China, and did some soul-searching along the way, you'd have arroz gordo, the namesake dish at Chicago's Fat Rice. The generous pot of aromatic rice, curry-scented chicken, and (much) more can be traced back to Macau, the former Portuguese colony in China, where it's almost always served at home. Chefs Conlon and Lo took inspiration from foreign-language cookbooks; their version is a blend of Portuguese and Chinese cooking that Conlon calls "the original fusion."