Vadouvan Casarecce with Green Curry Clam Sauce

The idea of green curry was stuck in my head. What is green curry? What does it actually mean? To me, it is the flavors and aromas of lemongrass, ginger, basil, lime, fish sauce, and jalapeno all wrapped together in flavorful bites. I wanted to make a green curry noodle and pair it with a green curry sauce to amplify the flavors. Then Tony unearthed some vadouvan, a French yellow curry enriched with additional onions and garlic. Eureka! It would be delicious to pair the two ideas of curry in one dish. We could use the vadouvan in the noodles and the green curry canvas for the sauce. As we considered this idea against the backdrop of clam sauce, we both reminisced about the ways in which the flavor of bacon enhanced the sauce. No, bacon is not traditional in clam sauce, we were discussing clams casino—as a sauce. At this point, my pepperoni fetish reared its head. Instead of bacon, I suggested that we integrate the pepperoni in the style of our salumi soffritos. Once we had decided upon the noodles, the sauce, and the soffrito, we had our framework. We used the vadouvan to flavor the water used to hydrate the extruded noodles. We steamed the clams on a bed of lemongrass, ginger, basil, lime, fish sauce, and jalapeno. We separated the cooked clams from their shells and reserved them to fold into the finished dish. We strained the aromatic clam broth and pureed it with cilantro and butter to make our green curry clam sauce. We ground the onions and pepperoni together and roasted them in the oven to make a roasted pepperoni soffrito. To serve the dish, we put a generous spoonful of the soffrito in the bottom of the bowl. We spooned the pasta, clams, and sauce over the soffrito. Finally, we topped the noodles with a generous grating of Parmigiano Reggiano and sent them out to be savored and devoured.