Fregola with Clams, Tomato and Saffron: Sardinia's Toasted Pasta, Cooked Like a Risotto
Fregola is what happens when Sardinia looks at couscous and decides it should be toasted. Semolina is rolled by hand with water into small irregular pellets, dried, and then baked until the outside browns. That toasting is the whole point: it gives the grains a nutty flavor and a firm shell that lets them simmer in broth for fifteen minutes without turning to mush. So fregola is not boiled and drained like pasta. It is cooked like risotto, in just enough liquid, until it has absorbed the flavor of whatever it sat in.
The classic is fregola con arselle, fregola with tiny clams, a dish of the Cagliari coast where the pellets simmer in a light tomato broth built on the clams' own liquor, with garlic, parsley and a pinch of the saffron that Sardinia has grown since the Middle Ages. Here is the method with fresh clams, the fifteen-minute version with a tin of Galician clams, and the reasons each step exists.
The pantry
Toasted fregola; Rustichella's fregola sarda is properly browned and holds its bite. Saffron threads, real ones; a small jar from our spice shelf lasts a year. Good extra virgin olive oil. Canned or fresh tomatoes; a few crushed San Marzanos or a big spoon of passata, not a sauce. And clams: fresh littlenecks or Manilas if you can get them, or a tin of Galician clams from our Conservas de Cambados shelf, which is what we cook with in Denver, a thousand miles from a clam bed.
Why it works
Clams release a salty, sweet liquor when they open, and that liquor is the sauce. The tomato gives it body and acidity, the saffron gives it color and a faint honeyed bitterness, and the toasted fregola thickens the broth slightly with its starch while absorbing it, the way rice does in a risotto. The finished dish should be loose, almost a thick soup, eaten with a spoon. If it sits, the fregola keeps drinking and the dish tightens; serve it the moment it is ready.
The recipe, with fresh clams
Serves four. About thirty-five minutes.
- 2 pounds small clams, littleneck or Manila, scrubbed
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more to finish
- 3 garlic cloves, sliced
- A pinch of chile flakes
- 1 cup crushed tomatoes or passata
- A generous pinch of saffron threads, about 20, steeped in 2 tablespoons hot water
- 1 1/2 cups (about 300 g) toasted fregola
- About 4 cups light fish stock, chicken stock or water, hot
- 1/2 cup dry white wine, optional
- A handful of parsley, chopped
- Salt, lemon
- Purge the clams in cold salted water for twenty minutes; discard any that stay open when tapped.
- In a wide pot, warm the oil over medium heat with the garlic and chile until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add the clams and the wine, if using, cover, raise the heat and cook until the clams open, 4 to 6 minutes. Lift the clams into a bowl with a slotted spoon, leaving the liquor in the pot. Discard any that did not open. Shell half the clams; keep the rest in their shells for the plate.
- Add the tomatoes and the saffron with its water to the pot and simmer 3 minutes.
- Stir in the fregola. Add hot stock a cup at a time, stirring now and then, keeping the fregola just covered, as you would a risotto. It will take 12 to 15 minutes to become tender with a slight bite. Taste for salt near the end; the clam liquor may have done the job.
- When the fregola is done and the broth is loose and slightly thickened, return all the clams to the pot for a minute to warm through. Stir in the parsley and a good thread of olive oil.
- Serve in warm shallow bowls with lemon on the side.
The fifteen-minute version, with a tin
Open a tin of Galician clams in brine or natural juice. Pour the liquid into a measuring cup and top up with water or stock to about 4 cups. Cook the garlic, chile, tomato and saffron as above, add the fregola, and cook it in the clam liquid and stock exactly as in the risotto method. Fold in the tinned clams for the last minute only, so they stay tender. The flavor is astonishingly close to the fresh version, because the liquor in a good tin is the same liquor a fresh clam gives up, and Galician canners have been capturing it for a century. Our razor clam guide explains why those tins taste the way they do; razor clams, sliced, work here too.
Variations and notes
Swap the clams for mussels, or use both. Add a handful of cherry tomatoes at the tomato stage in summer. Leave out the tomato entirely for the white version some Sardinian cooks prefer, and add more saffron. Use the leftover cold the next day as a salad with lemon and olive oil; toasted fregola holds up where other pastas would not. And at Denver's altitude, expect the fregola to need a few extra minutes and another half cup of stock, as our altitude guide explains.
The fregola, saffron, olive oil and tinned clams are at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, and ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com. The fresh clams, if you are near a coast, are your privilege.
