Baking

This recipe is about the affinity that clams and bacon have for each other. In order to highlight these flavors, I decided to combine baked clams with Amatriciana sauce (which is a classic Roman pasta sauce, featuring tomato and either pancetta or guanciale). Littleneck clams are steamed open, and the clam meat gets finely diced, tossed with amatriciana sauce, and put back into the shell to bake. I tried a version of this recipe where the clam meat is left whole, but I found it too hard to eat (it was chewy). <br /> <br />Please note that this recipe will yield about 1 pint of amatriciana sauce, but only ¼ cup of that sauce is necessary to dress a portion of 12 clams. You can reserve the rest of the sauce and use it with pasta. Remember that if you want to double or triple this recipe and serve 24 or 36 clams, you do not need to double or triple the amount of amatriciana sauce.

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