Poring through various technical manuals, trying to identify shellfish, I was excited to come across the common cockle being described in technical terms as being: “robust, gregarious and free living”.What!? Sounds like Electric Picnic happening at a beach near you.
A Japanese friend wrote to us recently, ending with the line “Autumn is here. Let’s make a fresh start”.
You will need a spade or a rake. They commune in, now we know, free living arrangements, just below the surface of the sand in the middle shore.
More technical stuff: the cockle is a mollusc - a bivalve that feeds on zooplankton (sounds like a good name for a band). They feed when covered by water, siphoning off the water and filtering out the plankton. Make sure that that water is clean by only collecting on remote beaches.
Cockles live for around four to five years, and, like trees, add concentric annual growth rings to their shell, increasing in number with maturity.
When you get them home put them in a bucket of clean fresh water. You can put oatmeal in the water to encourage them to feed and eject all the sand that inevitably collects in the shell. Change the water a few times to help remove the sand.
Pasta with Cockles and Tomato Sauce
Serves 4
cockles - about 10 per person, or whatever you’ve managed to find
olive oil
2 cloves garlic
parsley
500g fresh ripe tomatoes (or 1 tin Italian tomatoes)
chilli flakes
pasta
Put the cockles in a shallow saucepan and put the saucepan on the heat. As they open, carefully remove the cockles and extract their meat, “washing” each mollusc in a little cooking liquid to remove any salt. Discard any that don’t open. Strain the cockle liquid through a fine sieve lined with muslin. This should remove the sand and leave you with cockle and cockle juice.
Saute the garlic in the olive oil, and add the tomatoes. Cook until the tomatoes make a sauce, and then add the cockle juice, the chilli and the parsley. Add the cockles, and then season to taste.
Meanwhile, cook your pasta and serve with the tomato seafood sauce, garnished with more parsley.
Great photos, although I must admit I prefer pasta and seafood "in Bianco" as they say here-without tomato, perhaps with a little sea water, white wine,parsley to make the sauce. Thankyou for the tip about oatmeal,that's new to me,here the shake(a lot) the cockles,clams etc and keep changing the water as they like to serve the pasta with the shells. I've tried, but there are always a few grains of sand that ruin the dish!
ReplyDeleteWe cooked pasta with tomato sauce and with scallops, but I have to say it was a bad decision - especially the tasteless the scallops. Does the cockle have any taste? I have never tasted it yet.
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