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From The New York Time: January 7, 2004
By Mark Bittman

"The Minimalist: Spanish for Clams"

Every winemaking culture in the world cooks with its local product, but only Spain has sherry. And while sherry is not quite all-purpose, the way simple white wine is, it is manifestly more powerful and incomparably more complex. In fact, it rivals stock in the character it adds to many dishes.

That explains why it is a good bet that many times, when you are served Spanish food in a flavorful but anonymous "brown sauce," it contains a hefty dose of sherry. Sherry combined with seafood, olive oil and garlic, as in this recipe, produces a magically Spanish dish, one you can consider a template for many others.

Sherry comes from the area around Jerez (pronounced he-RETH, which is supposed to sound something like sherry), a town in southern Spain. It starts its life as white wine made from the palomino grape but for some mysterious reason produces a yeasty substance called flor, which gives it its unusual character. It is then "fortified" - its fermentation stopped by the addition of extra alcohol - so it is a little more potent than normal table wine.

You can spend a fortune on sherry, but since each bottle is a product of several different vintages it is consistent from year to year, and the fact that it is stabilized by alcohol enhances its shelf life. (Refrigerated, an opened bottle retains good flavor for several days.) In short, all real sherry is good (you should stay away from the fake, supermarket variety), and bottles costing $10 or so are more than acceptable. Fino is probably best for drinking, but the slightly sweeter, nuttier amontillado and oloroso are perhaps a little better for cooking.

As is almost always the case in cooking, the clams you use here should be as small as you can find. Tiny ones the size of a quarter are fun, but the slightly larger cockles or West Coast "butter" clams are equally tender and easier to eat. Mahogany clams or good littlenecks are also fine; do not use steamers, whose sand will spoil the dish.

In any case, buy only live clams, with shells that are undamaged and nearly impossible to pry open. Rinse them, scrubbing the shells if necessary, to rid them of all sand. Serve as an appetizer or a main course, with good bread for sopping up the sauce.

Recipe: Clams in Sherry Sauce

Time: 30 minutes
Yield: 4 servings

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, slivered
2 shallots or 1 small onion, diced
3 to 4 pounds very small clams, scrubbed
1/2 cup fino, amontillado or oloroso sherry
Black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons butter, or more olive oil
1 teaspoon lemon juice, or to taste
Chopped fresh parsley leaves.

1. Put oil in a deep skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and shallots, and cook, stirring, until shallots soften, about 5 minutes.

2. Add clams, and raise heat to high; cook, stirring, until clams begin to open, 5 to 10 minutes. Move them to a bowl. Add sherry to pan. Cook until slightly thickened, about 5 minutes, and then stir in pepper and butter.

3. Return clams to pan, and cook, stirring frequently, 2 to 3 minutes. Put clams on serving dish, and add lemon juice to sauce; taste, and adjust seasoning. Pour sauce over clams, garnish with parsley and serve.

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