Fregola

If this were our party, we'd get all the grilling out of the way early in the day and toss this Mediterranean fantasy of a salad together in our caftans.

Fregola, a tiny toasted pasta similar to pearled couscous, makes a flavorful base for this brothy spring dinner.

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

I’m crazy about the deep nuttiness of fregola (Italian couscous) and I’m always looking for new ways to show it off. When cooked in the style of a risotto, fregola gets really creamy and is a change from typical Arborio rice. Fresh corn turns this creamy risotto into summer goodness. The familiar flavors are boosted by the addition of shrimp and a topping of creamy melted leeks, which also makes a fabulous side dish on its own.

I love thinking of alternatives to your classic steak and potatoes. This main course salad is hearty without being heavy and contains all of the elements of a balanced meal—meat, starch, and vegetables. Grilled beef, crisp fennel, chewy fregola (see Note), and bright oranges are finished with a drizzle of briny green olive tapenade in this Mediterranean-inspired skirt steak salad. Varying texture and temperature play a powerful role in the makeup of this dish, adding a whole other dimension. I’m a believer that opposites do attract; hot and cold—the grilled meaty steak and the cool crunchy salad—play off each other. Tapenade is a rich olive spread popular in the Mediterranean. The salty earthiness of green olive tapenade is the perfect complement for pasta, spread for crostini, or topping for baked sweet potatoes. Visit your market’s olive bar and purchase high-quality green olives; leave the little pimento-stuffed ones for martinis.

Pastina refers to any tiny pasta shape, whether it’s stars, little squares, tiny shells, or riso. When you boil the pasta, undercook it just a tiny bit so it can cook together with the mussels and the clams for a few minutes, absorbing all that delicious liquid without getting mushy. In that way it’s almost like a risotto, but much easier to make.

Fregola is a toasted semolina pasta that is very popular in Sardinia. You can substitute any small shape pasta, such as orzo, which it resembles, but do make the effort to seek it out at a specialty food shop; its nutty flavor makes this pasta salad really unusual and delicious.

This dish is a perfect choice for those blustery but bright early spring days: It's comforting from the simple-but-flavorful broth and bright from the crunchy fresh topping.

Fregola, a small, toasted Sardinian pasta, is classic with clams, and cockles make a great sub for Italy’s tiny vongole veraci.