The plan was to do a seafood boil for the night of my birthday, but that day came and went and I only discovered last week that the market in the quay sells a fresh stock of assorted live seafood. I got a pound each of mussels and clams and got to soaking, scrubbing and debearding the odd creatures:
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| Bay mussels left, Manila clams right |
We also grabbed a loaf of crusty bread and some salad ingredients. I couldn't decide if I wanted to go with a spicy coconut broth or a more traditional cajun style, so I did both!
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| With sweet corn and Yukon golds over a spicy cajun coconut broth. |
Next time I'll add sausage and either spot prawns or dungeness crab for other diners, but I had a ball picking the sweet fatties out of their shells and dunking my bread in the fragrant broth. Surprisingly, all of the mussels survived my debearding (apparently if you pull it out wrong it can decapitate the little guys inside. . . wait, decapitate? Do they even have heads?).
The salad on the side is pears, romaine and mango slices in a honey-lime vinaigrette. Simple, yes, but it opened my eyes to the joy of fresh lime juice on mango.
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| Hey buddy. |
And it didn't take long for everything to be om'nom'ed up.
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| Fin. |
That looks so tasty. I can't wait to try it! The part that I don't get is how you made the broth(s). Details please?
ReplyDeleteSooooofie! If I do it again I'll make the broth differently; this time wasn't all that thoughtful, but here's what I did:
ReplyDelete- Boiled the potatoes in salted water, adding the corn in for the last five or six minutes of cooking time. (Potatoes in big chunks, corn split in half)
- I prepared the broth by melting some bouillon in coconut milk and adding cajun spice and extra cayenne, boiled it a bit then added the seafood.
- When the seafood was in there a few minutes (halfway cooked), I added in the potatoes and corn so they'd soak up a bit of flavour. I cooked them separately so the broth wouldn't get all starchy, but I'm not sure how much of a difference it made.
Next time, I'd saute a shallot and garlic (and maybe chilies) in a big pot until soft. Then I'd either add some red curry paste and fry a bit before adding coconut milk or add coconut milk and stir in cajun seasoning as before with a bit of fish sauce. Just a bit more flavour to infuse the shellfish with.
Thank you Jessie! I'll give it a try this weekend.
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