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I unabashedly love shellfish at any and all times, but there’s something about summer that makes me crave it even more. Maybe it’s because seafood brings me back to my childhood vacations by the ocean—or it might simply be that shellfish cooks so fast that I’m able to spend less time in the kitchen and more time outside. All I really want these days is to dive into a giant bowl of mussels and clams alfresco while soaking up the gorgeous sunset and chatting the night away. To me, that is the perfect summer evening.
This unbelievably quick and flavorful dish from my new cookbook, Did You Eat Yet?, combines clams and mussels with robust, earthy soba noodles in a garlicky, briny, and slightly spicy broth. It’s a weeknight-ready, back-pocket recipe that still feels like fancy restaurant cooking—and if doubled (or tripled), makes for a perfect, showstopping main course at a small dinner party too. It’s uncomplicated, requires no babysitting, and takes all of 30 minutes to prepare from start to finish.
When you’re cooking shellfish, there are a few hard and fast rules to follow. First, always source your ingredients from a reputable fishmonger. And how can you tell that their seafood is fresh? When in doubt, use your snout: Give those clams and mussels a good whiff, and the only thing you should smell is the salty ocean. Live clams and mussels should be tightly shut, but if you find a few ajar, give them a gentle tap and their shells should slowly close. Second, store them in the bag they came in on a bowl of ice in the coldest part of your fridge, making sure to leave the bag open because living shellfish need to breathe. Lastly, before serving, toss any shellfish that didn’t open during cooking.
As much as the seafood is the star of this dish, it’s the soba noodles that really bring it all together for me. The robust flavor of soba noodles provides a lovely contrast to the brininess of the broth. Soba is made with buckwheat flour, which is nutty and nutritious and quicker to cook than wheat-based noodles. (And despite its name, buckwheat is not related to wheat at all—meaning that soba noodles that are labeled “100 percent buckwheat” are naturally gluten-free.) Soba is just as delicious cold as it is hot, so you can even prepare the noodles ahead of time to make this dish even speedier.
Soba noodles are readily available online and at many grocery stores, but if you can’t find them, you can swap them out for another type of noodle, such as spaghetti or ramen. And although I think this recipe is best with a mix of mussels and clams, you can stick to just one type of shellfish if you happen to prefer one over the other. You could even scrap the bivalves altogether and throw in shrimp or lobster.
The one thing you can’t substitute, however, is the browned anchovy butter. This is the secret ingredient that makes this dish rich but not heavy, complex but not unfamiliar, and downright delicious. I’m normally an add-fish-sauce-to-everything kind of guy, but I love using tinned anchovy filets here because the small pieces of anchovy permeate the dish, adding little bursts of umami to every bite—as opposed to the subtle undertone that you would get if you used fish sauce. The addition of browned anchovy butter lifts the briny flavor and texture of shellfish to new heights. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that anchovy butter deserves a place in more than just your mussel and clam dishes.
Whether you are a bona fide shellfish expert or are looking for a good entry-level cooking method to get started cooking bivalves at home, this dish is the key to an effortlessly delicious meal that’s perfect for any evening of the year—alfresco or not.
