Becky Anderson Photography – Kalamazoo on-location photographer specializing in newborn, maternity, children, senior and family photography

If you read my Weekend Dish post from two weeks ago, you know that we have recently cooked little neck clams for the first time. While in search of another recipe, we found this recipe from Emeril – Little Neck Clams with Spicy Venison Sausage Pasta.  So we decided to hit up the local farmer’s market again and buy some more clams for dinner.

As usual, we made some substitutions and omissions from the original recipe.

1.  Saute 1 cup onion in olive oil.  Season with salt and some crushed red pepper.

2.  Add 1 lb Hot Italian Turkey Sausage (removed from casings and crumbled).  Cook until browned.

3.  Add 3 cloves chopped garlic and 1 TBS dbl concentrated tomato paste (I love the tubes that you can keep in the fridge)

4.  Deglaze with 1 cup white wine (I used Chardonnay).

5.  Add 2 cups chopped Roma tomatoes (bought at the farmer’s market!) and a couple of shakes of dried oregano.

6.  After cooking for a few minutes, add 2 cups clam juice plus 1 cup water and bring to a boil.  Simmer for 30 minutes until the sauce reduces and thickens.

7.  Add 1 dozen little neck clams and cook covered for  8-10 minutes until all clams open up.  (Original recipe calls for 3 dozen clams but just Andy and I were eating it so we used less)

8.  Serve over fresh linguine.  Enjoy!

Check out this cool spoon that I got from my sister-in-law…I love how it sits on the pot, I love that it is orange…and Andy loves how the drips go back into the pot instead of onto the stove (I believe I mentioned before that he is the kitchen cleaner!)   Check them out here!

My shot of the final dish! Yum!

Andy’s shot…I was not tall enough with my 50mm on a cropped sensor to get the entire plate in from above.

Andy and I have always enjoyed ceviche and have often talked about making it but have never followed thru. This weekend that was all going to change. And if we were going to make ceviche – why not try two different recipes?

So while we were at the farmer’s market this weekend to pick up some little neck clams and locally caught shrimp, we picked up the veggies we needed for the ceviche. Look at the bounty below..cucumber, fresh roma tomatoes, a bunch of onions and cilantro.

For our first try at ceviche, we didn’t want to use our coveted local shrimp until we had the perfect ceviche recipe. So we decided to make tilapia ceviche for this go around.

Ceviche is basically seafood marinated in citrus juices. The citric acid breaks down the proteins, effectiviely “cooking” the seafood. Most hispanic countries have their own versions of ceviche. We started with a peruvian ceviche and a mexican ceviche.

Peruvian ceviche (as told to me by a photographer friend who lived in Peru for 5 years – thanks Andrea!) is fish cut into small cubes, marinated in lemon juice with onions, cilantro and cumin. Since cumin and cilantro are two of my favorite flavors – it was a no-brainer to try this one. Typically it is served with corn on the cob and sweet potato (but we skipped that part since we were making two ceviches plus some fresh shrimp).

Mexican ceviche (as presented on the food network in Mexican Made Easy) is fish marinated in lime juice and then drained and mixed with diced tomato, cucumber, onion, cilantro and a serrano. How can it be bad when it is basically my salsa recipe with added fish and cucumber? We substituted clamato with V-8 and a large splash of clam juice. Marcela suggested in her show serving it on top of a tortilla spread with mayonnaise…we skipped that part and ate it with blue tortilla chips. Embarrassingly enough, when I just looked at the photo, we forgot to add the cilantro to the mexican version. My only excuse is that unfortunately the cilantro from the farmer’s market was really bland…so after we started the marinating, Andy ran to the grocery store to pick up more cilantro.

All in all we liked both ceviches. Be warned – they are very potent in their citrus flavors…a little ceviche goes a long way. We will definitely be trying both of these recipes again and perhaps, testing other latin versions as well.

Peruvian on the left, Mexican on the right.

I hope you are enjoying Weekend Dish. Andy and I are sure enjoying cooking together in the kitchen and trying new recipes. Because we loved the little neck clam recipe from last week, we found another to try this week. Stay tuned for a post next weekend on Little Neck Clams with Sausage, Tomatoes and Onion over Linguine inspired by Emeril.