Recipe: Bloody Caesar spaghetti
Clamato not included
My Canadian readers aside, there’s good odds you haven’t heard of a Caesar — or bloody Caesar, to give it its full dues — a cocktail which seems to be uniquely popular north of the US. As a drink, it sounds faintly cursed: it’s more or less a bloody Mary with clam juice mixed in. But as a pasta dish? It turns out the Canadians were onto something after all.
I stumbled onto the Caesar when tinkering with a loose plan for my own bloody Mary pasta sauce. I started with Elizabeth Hewson’s excellent bloody Mary lamb and kale ragù, which involves slow-cooking a whole lamb shoulder, and tried to turn it into more of a weeknight dinner. In all honesty, I struggled: without the luxury of slow-cooking a fatty cut, the vodka and lamb seemed to clash rather than complement, and after a few attempts I was ready to give up.
Caesar came to my rescue. This Canadian variant to the bloody Mary combines clam and tomato juices — or, more commonly these days, Clamato™ — alongside the usual Worcestershire sauce, celery, and hot sauce. In a pleasing twist of fate its creator, Walter Chell, claimed to have been inspired by Venetian spaghetti alle vongole, giving me the excuse to bring things full circle.
When it came to technique, I turned to Umai, Milly Lagares’ excellent Japanese cookbook from last year. Her tomato and octopus pasta has become a staple in our house, and so where she uses sake and soy sauce, I’ve applied vodka and Worcestershire, and also kept her final flourish of butter to add a richness that balances out how sharp just about everything else in here is.
This is not a subtle dish, but then the Caesar isn’t an especially subtle cocktail. The vodka and hot sauce are warming, the Worcestershire sauce spiced and tangy, and the celery gives it a vegetal freshness. If you want to really take it to another level, a dusting of freshly grated horseradish is the perfect final flourish.
If you’re in the UK like me, then fresh clams are unfortunately ruinously expensive. You might be able to find them frozen for less, and I’ve also made this successfully with jarred clams I found in an Italian deli — just make sure they aren’t preserved in vinegar. The better alternative might be to just give in and make this with cockles or mussels, which are a fifth of the price in my fishmonger.
