For my first young&foodish event, Linguine Vongole: The Finer Points of a Perfect Pasta, I organised a “Why do you love linguine vongole? competition on Twitter. You were asked to describe why you love linguine with clams in 140 characters or less. Hundreds of you responded with passionate snippets of poetry and prose. Thousands more of you tweeted votes for one of the 5 short-listed finalists.

Sadly, one response was a few characters too long and a few days late for consideration. It arrived in a Facebook message from Marcella Hazan, the high priestess of Italian cooking in American kitchens and a few British ones, too. Fergus Henderson cited Marcella and her Essentials of Italian Cooking as one of three food writers and books which greatly insired him: “Life in the kitchen changed with the arrival of Marcella Hazan’s classic Italian cuisine”.

So tell us, Marcella, why do you love linguine vongole?  

Dear Daniel,
 

I am sorry I haven’t been able to respond sooner. I have grown weary of rapturous and adjective rich food prose. How do you communicate the thrill of a sunset on the Gulf of Mexico to someone who has never seen it? Linguine ( I prefer spaghettini) with vongole is one of the pinnacles of culinary wizardry. To understand it you need to know the sweet, peppery, tender, tiny clams from either of Italy’s main seas, the viscosity and depth of central Italian olive oil, the firmness of high quality Italian pasta, and you must have experienced the light sure hand of a Neapolitan cook in the dosage of garlic and peperoncino. When you already know all these things, all you need to do to stir raging longings is to pronounce the words, linguine (I prefer spaghettini) con le vongole.
 

Buon appetito.

Marcella