How to prepare spaghetti tarantina

Simple but very tasty, spaghetti alla tarantina is a perfect first course to savor the intense flavor of mussels.

Among the fish first courses there is one (perhaps even more than one) capable of making both those who prepare it and those who enjoy it agree. We are talking about spaghetti tarantina, prepared with cherry tomatoes and mussels and perfect for a spaghetti dinner with friends or family .

It must be said that there is no single recipe for this typical Apulian dish. Some prepare it plain , only with mussels, garlic and chilli, others add cherry tomatoes and still others puree or tomato pulp. We have chosen a middle ground but know that you can easily omit the cherry tomatoes if you prefer to enjoy the flavor of the mussels in their purity. The important thing is to buy authentic Taranto mussels , pulpy and sweet with a white-pink colour. Valuable to the point of often being subject to counterfeiting, the Taranto mussel is bred in the Mar Piccolo where the union between salt water and fresh water coming from 34 citri (fresh water springs) helps to keep salinity low.

How to prepare the recipe for spaghetti tarantina

1. First clean the mussels by removing the byssus and scraping the shell with a scourer. Then rinse them under running water and place them in a pan with a drizzle of oil.
2. Cover with the lid and leave for 5 minutes , until they open. Those that do not open in this period of time will be thrown away.
3. Transfer the mussels to a bowl, shelling almost all of them. Keep just a dozen for the final decoration of the dish.
4. Filter the mussel water and keep it aside.
5. In the same pan, heat the oil and add the garlic and chilli. Once browned, add the cherry tomatoes cut into quarters and the liquid from the mussels and leave for about ten minutes. Finally, add the cleaned mussels. Taste and adjust salt only if needed.
6. Boil the spaghetti in plenty of not-too-salted water. Once ready, drain them and sauté them in the pan with the sauce, completing with the whole mussels and a generous sprinkling of fresh chopped parsley.

As mentioned in the introduction, it is possible to prepare spaghetti with mussels Tarantina style even without tomatoes. In this case, after opening them and filtering the liquid, use the water to stir in the spaghetti, then adding the mussels and parsley. Furthermore, if you want to immerse yourself in the most authentic Puglia , use a short pasta format such as tubetti and enjoy everything with a spoon.

We also leave you a video where all the steps necessary for preparing this very simple fish first course are illustrated.

Let's stay in Puglia to discover another recipe with mussels that deserves to be tried. We're talking about mussel peppers !

storage

Spaghetti alla tarantina can be kept in the refrigerator for a maximum of 2 days . Reheat them in a pan with a drizzle of oil before consuming them.