Porco com Amêijoas à Alentejana
Surf and Turf. Land and sea. Mar y montagña. A classic pairing that seems to always work so well… I’ve loved this dish for a while now, having stumbled upon the recipe posted on Leite’s Culinaria several years ago… but this dish it seems, has a long and venerable history, originating out of the Alentejo region in Portugal. The best description I’ve read of the region comes from this personal account by Miguel de Almeida at West Coast Cooking. His recipe is slightly different from the one I used; indeed, there seems to be an infinite number of variations one can take with this beautiful dish. At its base it’s hearty, easy and comforting; however, it doesn’t quite work well if you want to gin up a quick weeknight meal. You want a bit of time for prep and leaving the pork ample time to bathe in its marinade (overnight is ideal), so it’s probably best to attempt this over a weekend or when you’ve got some time.
Oh – and you’ll want to use some sort of stew pot or large-ish dutch oven for this dish.
For the marinade
Pork and Clams, served with Polenta, sauteed kale, and green salad with ramps
Here’s the adapted recipe:
Porco com Amêijoas à Alentejana
Ingredients
- 1 2-pound boneless pork shoulder or butt, as marbled as you can find, cut into 1-inch cubes
- 2 bay leaves
- 5-7 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 3 tablespoons smoked (or sweet) paprika
- 1 cup dry white wine (more or less)
- 2 whole cloves
- olive oil
- salt and pepper to taste
- 2 medium onions, chopped
- 1 can whole, peeled roma tomatoes (or around 5 fresh tomatoes, if in season)
- 2 cups northern beans (or any other smaller white bean you desire); I used canned beans to cut on cooking and prep time.
- 2-3 pounds small clams such as Manila or Asari
- chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
Procedure
Place the first 6 ingredients into a non-reactive dish or zip-top baggie. Let marinate overnight.
When you’re ready to cook, separate the pork from the marinade (reserve the marinade for later) and pat the pork dry. Over high heat, sautee the pork in olive oil, sprinkling with salt and pepper until well browned (you can do it in batches – for best browning, don’t crowd the pork pieces); remove from your dutch oven. Add in the onions and sautee until soft. Add the tomatoes and beans and mix well – let simmer for around 2 minutes. Add back the pork and the reserved marinade. Lower the heat, cover the stew and let simmer for about an hour; more if you’ve got time. Add in more wine if the mixture looks like it might be drying out. During the last 10 minutes of cooking increase the heat, add in the clams and cover – the clams should open in about 5-10 minutes. Make sure to remove any that don’t open. When you’re ready to serve, sprinkle with parsley and a little more olive oil if desired.
Serves 2 with leftovers for the week, or 4 comfortably (with polenta and sides).
Variations
There are a ton of variations out there, some calling for the addition of potatoes – I’ve made a version that includes a small dice of potatoes in the stew; sometimes I’d fry the potatoes separately and serve the stew on top. This recipe from Eat Drink Think uses a Dean and Deluca version that suggests portuguese sausage and fatty prosciutto may be included/substituted for the pork.
Other photos are on my Flickr stream here.
