Shellfish and eels recipes
Squid and mint salad
Quarter or dice some cherry tomatoes, add 1/2 red onion, diced, lime zest, lime juice, a good pinch of caster sugar, and salt. Drain the tin of squid in olive oil and add to the salad. Add chopped mint. Garnish with almonds.
Mussels with cream cheese
The Pepus mussels in punchy, sharp escabeche make a lot of sense on crackers with cream cheese. Sprinkle with chopped parsley, or try a basil leaf between the cream cheese and mussel.
Mussel salad
Toss mussels with rocket and cucumber slices, and use the escabeche as a dressing
Sea urchin salad sandwich
Mix sea urchin roe with wasabi and soy sauce and spoon over torn lettuce leaves and slices of boiled egg and tomato in a salad sandwich.
Clam tapenade
Mash capers and black olives and, instead of anchovy fillets, roughly slice some clams because “clams are a milder halfway house” between oysters and anchovies.
Caramelised squid
Fry baby squid in a little olive oil until it turns golden and starts to caramelise. Add sea salt.
Surimi eels with asparagus and mushrooms
Heat a tbsp of olive oil in a frying pan and gently brown 3 or 4 asparagus spears and set aside. Sauté a clove of sliced garlic in the same frying pan - add more olive oil if you need to - for about a minute and then add 100g of sliced mushrooms. Cook for about six minutes and set aside. In the same pan heat the drained surimi eels for about two minutes and keep stirring. Chop the asparagus and add to the pan with the mushrooms and garlic. Season and enjoy!
Clamamole
This is a ceviche-y guacamole, the avocados swapped out for clams. Dice a tin of clams, then “all the greens”: coriander, lime, spring onion and a shallot. Dice a red onion too, and if you want something finer than dice for the red onion, “twang the onion with the side of a knife like a guitar and get the spray off it instead.” Sprinkle with sriracha and have on toast soldiers.
Clam chowder
Make a fish stock with prawn heads, carrots, onion, celery, garlic and black pepper. When the stock is ready - after about 30 minutes - add whole milk and cream to taste, add potato and white fish that will hold its shape (halibut or small pieces of monkfish). The clams go in at the last minute, add salt or the brine the clams come packed in, and pepper.
Mussel paella
Ingredients: 1 small onion. 2 tbsp olive oil. 1 sweet red pepper. ½ to 1 tin of tuna. 2 tomatoes. 1 tsp salt. ½ tsp of sweet or hot paprika. 10 saffron threads. 130g of paella rice. 500 ml of water. 1 tin of mussels. 3 piquillo peppers. 10 olives. This recipe serves two. Chop a small onion finely and sweat in the olive oil on a medium heat for about 10 minutes, keep an eye on it and stir it so the onion doesn’t scorch, until it’s soft and sweet. Then add one sweet red pepper, de-seeded and finely chopped, and keep on a medium heat. Meanwhile peel two tomatoes - you can submerge them in boiling water for ten seconds, then into cold, to make peeling them easier - then finely dice the tomatoes until they’re almost like a purée - and set to one side. Add half to one whole tin of drained tuna. Bonito del Norte is good because it imparts lots of flavour into the other ingredients. Keep it on a medium heat and reduce the tomato juices. While it’s reducing, add 1 tsp of salt, ½ tsp of sweet paprika (or hot paprika if you want some heat) and about half a tsp of saffron threads, or to taste. Meanwhile, bring a pan of water to the boil. When the tomato and tuna mix has reduced but there is still some juice add 135g of Brindisa’s standard paella rice and give it a stir for a minute to coat and moisten the rice.Add hot water to the rice, three times the amount as rice. Add half a tin of pickled or spicy mussels, you can just pick them out of the tin; it’s ok if a bit of the marinade or oil goes in the paella. Now is the last time you can stir the paella. Make sure there’s no rice at the bottom of the pan and the ingredients are all blended together. You can add 8 to ten pitted olives at this point if you like. Turn up the heat and let it boil for 5 minutes, then reduce to a simmer for 25 minutes. If you use a paella dish it will heat up quicker than a frying pan. Whichever you use, keep turning it on the hob and moving it up and down so it doesn’t end up overdone in the middle and watery round the edges, and gets the signature golden crispy base. After the paella has simmered for 10 to 15 minutes and it’s about half way through the cooking time add the other half of the tin of mussels as a garnish. You can add a blanket of piquillo peppers at this point too so it retains the steam and cooks in a different way. Garnish with more olives and serve. Recipe by Patrick Martinez
Panko razor clams
Carefully roll patted-dry razor clams firstly in seasoned plain flour. Then in two whisked eggs, and finally in panko breadcrumbs. Lay them out on a tray covered with baking parchment. Heat some vegetable oil in a deep pan. Lower the razor clams into the oil, two or three at a time, and let them cook for ten-fifteen seconds until golden. Remove and scatter with sea salt and serve with lemon wedges and mayo.
Smoked mussel omelette
Melt butter in a frying pan on a low heat. Add 1/2 diced onion and one diced red pepper and soften for ten minutes. Add one clove of minced garlic for the last minute. Then add three beaten eggs and a pinch of salt. Finally add Fangst smoked mussels to the eggs before it's set. Flip over each side of the omelette and garnish with chopped parsley or chives.