Seaweed Fire

The wracks are all in flower now, revealing their true colours. Use these seaweeds with their bubbles of seawater for your bake; the extra water, released in the fire, will keep everything moist.

This is a clam bake, a way of cooking food in seaweed over a fire that originated in New England, in the USA. It never took on here, and has been ousted by the BBQ. Shame, because this is a lovely way of cooking food, and it is easier to cook, in fact, than a barbecue, because you just leave it to cook away on its own.

Perhaps it never took on because, instead of being all toasty and firey, and full of sociable aromas, like a BBQ,  a clam bake just sits at the bottom of your garden under its tarp, looking like a crime scene. But, having made a clam bake, I would rank it almost superior to a BBQ. All the food cooks at the same time and at the same temperature, and the seaweed works some sort of alchemy that means everything comes out perfect - sealed and moist and full of flavour. You’ll never boil a lobster again once you’ve tried this, and while it will never replace the BBQ, it has its own magic, and is particularly suitable for cooking fish. Gathering all the stuff, especially the seaweed, making the pit, and building the fire is also a huge part of the fun. Get a whole crew of family and friends involved.

It may be called a clam bake, but we didn’t cook clams. We cooked a lobster, some chicken thighs (boned and rubbed with cajun spice rub), corn on the cob, a couple of chorizos and a pile of new potatoes.

Next time, we’ll do it on the beach, and we’ll cook mussels and clams and whole fish (hopefully just caught) wrapped in sea lettuce.

There are plenty of versions of this, but this is how we cooked ours.

Dig a hole in the ground. You can dig in your garden, or on the beach. Line the hole with sand. Collect some smooth stones. You can also use bricks. Place a single layer of stones in the hole.

Make a fire on the stones, and burn the wood for at least two hours, until the stones are blazing hot.

After two hours, rake away the very hot coals, we used a garden spade and rake to remove them. We put them in a steel BBQ bucket.

You can use the raked coals to BBQ some extra food if you are having a party.

Place a large black bin bag of seaweed onto the hot stones, making sure to cover all of them. Use a rake to spread the seaweed. It should immediately sizzle and begin to go bright green.

The food is then placed on the seaweed, and yes, it should be a live lobster (I can't pretend that this is easy). Lie the lobster on its back, or it might try to run away. Add your other foods, here potatoes, chicken thighs (boned and rubbed with a Cajun herb mix), sweet corn, and chorizo sausages.

Cover with another very thick layer of seaweed, and then cover the whole pit with a tarpaulin, making sure no steam escapes. Leave for one hour.

After an hour, remove the food onto a hot serving plate.

Place the lobster on a board, slice down the middle, lengthways, being careful to preserve the juices. Serve with some drawn butter, and maybe a pesto and a salad.

You'll never eat lobster any other way again.