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By Root 886 0

local. She took advantage, too, of the samphire that covers the salt marshes of the flat Norfolk coast. In summer, you can pick it yourself (wellingtons are a prudent measure), or buy it from village stalls outside farmhouses and from fishmongers. Take home plenty because it freezes well. Steam or blanch it in unsalted water, after picking it over and cutting away brown stem lengths, and serve it with butter like asparagus. You pick it up, nibble off the tender tops and then chew the green lower sections from their central strings.

In this recipe, samphire is teamed with Colchester clams (mussels or oysters could be used instead), and the sauce is flavoured with saffron – not in these days from Saffron Walden but from Spain. Only use the stringless green tips of samphire, serving the rest at another meal: 1 kg (2 lb) should provide enough.

Serves 6

6 handfuls of samphire tips

36 clams

150 ml (5 fl oz) dry white wine

2 small shallots, chopped

1 medium carrot, chopped

pinch of saffron, steeped in a little hot water

300 ml (10 fl oz) crème fraîche or half each soured and double cream

julienne shreds of carrot and leek, blanched, to garnish

Wash and steam or blanch the samphire. Drain well. Scrub the clams. Bring the wine, chopped shallots and carrot to the boil, put in the clams, cover and leave for 2 minutes. Remove the clams, if open; otherwise leave a little longer until they open. Set aside six clams in their shells. Remove the remaining clams and discard the shells. Strain the liquor into a wide shallow pan, add the saffron and its liquor, and boil down to concentrate the flavour. Stir in the cream (s), and boil slightly to thicken. Off the heat, stir in the clams and cool. Add seasoning, if necessary.

Put the samphire on six plates, spoon over the clams with their sauce, and decorate with the julienne and the reserved clams in their shells.

SPAGHETTI ALLE VONGOLE

Small clams in a tomato sauce are often served with spaghetti in central and southern Italy. In the north, in Venice, they would be added to a risotto with a lump of butter rather than tomato sauce.

Serves 6

500 g (1 lb) spaghetti

3 kg (6 lb) clams, washed

1 large onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

3 tablespoons olive oil

400 g (14 oz) can tomatoes

60 g (2 oz) chopped parsley (large bunch)

Cook the spaghetti in plenty of boiling salted water in the usual way, until it is cooked but not slimily soft. Drain and keep warm until the sauce is finished.

Start the sauce as soon as the spaghetti goes into the pan. Open the clams in a large pan over a moderate heat, discard the shells and strain off the liquid from the fish. Brown the onion and garlic lightly in the oil. Add the tomatoes and some of the clam liquor. Boil down to a rich sauce. Add clams, which will be adequately cooked, just to re-heat them. Remove sauce from the stove, stir in the parsley and pour over the spaghetti, mixing it well.

† COD, LING, COLEY, POLLOCK, POLLACK, etc.

Gadidea spp.

Cod, oh dear not cod. Again. I used to dislike it, or perhaps I used rather to feel bored by it when it was the bottom fish on the marble slab. When I was first writing Fish Cookery in 1971, I noted that there were a number of things you could do with it, but were they worth your while? Although Escoffier had remarked that if cod were only rarer, ‘It would be held in as high esteem as salmon; for when it is really fresh and of good quality, the delicacy and delicious flavour of its flesh admit of its ranking among the finest of fish,’ when it came to the count, he had only been moved to give six recipes to it in his Guide Culinaire, by comparison with sole which had 182.

Fifteen years later, the laugh is on me: in those days, cod was forty-five per cent of the total wet fish landings in Britain; by 1985, it had dropped to just over thirteen per cent. A figure that would, I think, have surprised Escoffier. As I write now, in December 1986, there are reports of reduced breeding stocks with national quotas in the