White Clam Sauce with Crispy Prosciutto & Zoodles
White Clam Sauce with Crispy Prosciutto & Zoodles
A lighter, modern take on pasta with white clam sauce. I don't know about you but I don't think I'll EVER get off the zoodle train!
Ingredients
- 1 pound zoodles, fully drained (see directions!)
- 1 TBSP grapeseed oil
- 1 TBSP olive oil
- 2 wide strips of prosciutto torn into strips
- 3 cloves garlic minced
- 1/2 tsp fresh thyme
- 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
- 1 cup white wine
- 1 can Progresso clam sauce
- 1 10 ounce can whole baby clams
- 1 TBSP butter
- 1 tsp garlic salt
- The juice of one lemon
- Ground pepper to taste
Directions
- Step 1 In a large sauce pot over medium heat add the olive oil, strips of prosciutto and smashed garlic. Cook stirring occasionally until the prosciutto starts to crisp and the garlic becomes fragrant, about 3-5 minutes. Add the thyme and red pepper flakes and cook for 1 minute more.
- Step 2 Pour in the white wine and bring to a simmer. Lower heat and reduce wine by about half. Drain the can of clams, setting clams aside but reserving the clam juice.
- Step 3 Add the Progresso clam sauce and reserved clam juice to the pot and return to a simmer. Cook for 4-5 minutes.
- Step 4 Prepare the zoodles: Make sure to fully wring out any water. You don’t want soppy zoodles! I do this by pushing the zoodles down into a mesh strainer and squeezing out the water. Heat a skillet over medium high heat and add the grapeseed oil (which has a higher flash point!). Add the zoodles and sauté for 2 minutes, just until it starts to crisp around the edges. Remove from heat.
- Step 5 Whisk the butter into the clam sauce, then add the baby clams. Remove from heat, add the juice of 1 lemon and salt and pepper to taste.
- Step 6 To plate, pour clam sauce over zoodles and serve with grated parmesan cheese.
Today’s “word” of the day – “healthify” (yes I invented it, no judgment please!). It’s pretty self explanatory, but I’m using it to describe how you can take a recipe that’s typically an indulgence and make it a healthy guilt free meal by thinking out of the box and incorporating healthy ingredients and substitutions. For someone like me who LOVES food, but is at the same time very health/fitness conscious, it can sometimes be such a battle to keep my meals healthy. Especially now that I’m burning the candle at both ends and don’t have the same time to devote to cooking and recipe curation as I used to. There are definitely those nights where I wish I could just dial in a pizza and call it a night. (And guess what, occasionally those nights do happen, c’est la vie!) But more often than not, I still want to eat healthy, even at the end of a longggg day and that’s where healthy recipe hacks are SO important.
Case in point, the base of this recipe and one of my favorite “hacks”, zoodles – such an easy way to lighten a dish without sacrificing any of the taste and flavor. That’s my opinion anyways – Marc HATES zucchini and therefore would not love this dish. (Hence why I made it on a night he worked late, LOL) For those people who read “white clam sauce” and immediately associate it with pasta and therefore have to have it, GO FOR IT! There’s no judgment in my kitchen. Another way to satisfy that fix? Mix a little pasta in with your zoodles, that way you can answer your craving but not have the pasta overwhelm the rest of the dish. See what I mean?
SO while Marc might not have been keen on this dish, my new au pair said she loved it. And I saw her heating up the leftovers the next night so I think she really meant that! If you’ve been following my instagram account, you’ll know that we hired her recently – she’s only been in the US for 3 weeks now. She’s from Argentina and an amazing cook in her own right (her empanadas are to die for!), so it’s fun to cook for someone who appreciates cooking as much as we do. And now that Marc works such crazy hours it’s been nice for me to not only have company around the house but also someone to enjoy our meals with. I just hope she doesn’t get sick of me recipe-testing on her. At least this week’s recipes so far have been winners! I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as she and I did. Comment below and let me know!
