Last week I made the Clams with Garlic, Sake, and Butter from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Kenji describes this recipe as a combination of classic Western flavors—garlic, butter, and clams—with a dash of sake and soy sauce and that is a perfect description.

No new ingredients and no new technique for this dish. The technique is pretty much the same as the Cantonese-Style Clams in Black Bean Sauce.

Kenji advises serving with noodles, rice, or a good loaf of crusty bread. We opted for noodles as we were having plenty of rice with other dishes during the week. The clams certainly fit with the pasta, and probably helped us make more use of the clam sauce. As usual with clam dishes, we felt that we were left feeling that it wasn’t much food, but it was tasty. My son also ate a few clams on their own, but my daughter declined to try any.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.