Learning to eat everything

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Shellfish is a big category. I don't really like the texture and often the flavor doesn't blow me away.


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It's probable that everytime you've eaten shellfish it wasn't cooked properly.

Overcooked shellfish is rubbery and chewy - shellfish thats been mistreated so that the animal is overly stressed before it dies is also rubbery and has a faint almost metallic taste to it which isn't supposed to be there.

Badly cooked food uses ingredients to mask the flavour of what the principal thing is - Well cooked food uses ingredients that enhance the flavour of the food subtly and allow the real flavour/texture of the food in question to come to the fore.

I grew up in Cornwall in the UK (Falmouth to be exact - which is the 3rd largest natural harbour in the world) I [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] shellfish and seafood in general but I was spoiled rotten then and had easy access to most local fish that was hours old at most - One of the best meals I ever ate was barbequed whole trout - caught from a river and killed/cooked immediately and very simply with a little salt and lemon juice.

Sadly these days tho I live close to London and can get fish direct from places like Billingsgate market - even then the quality of "local" fish I used to love so much and got in Cornwall dirt cheap and still half alive while very good isn't close to what it can be.

Basically fish quality (like everything else in life) is king - pay as much as you can afford for fish - imo fish that is older than 24hours past being caught - or fish that has been frozen at some point loses much of it's flavour. But use as fresh a fish as you can get. Shellfish like mussels and clams are always sold live - in fact you must discard dead mussels clams etc before you cook them otherwise you will poison yourself.

If you have the time and inclination try these.

Lobster: - Buy live lobster from a quality fishmonger - cook it yourself by dropping it into a large pan of rapidly boiling vinegar water (125ml vinegar to 8 litres water - 1/2 cup to 8 quarts in US measurements)

People tell you that the most humane way to kill a lobster prior to cooking it is to stab it in the head with a skewer. As far as I am aware lobsters are very ancient creatures - thousands of years old - they do not have a brain they have several bulges along their spinal cord - none of which appears to function as we might think a brain would. Consequently when you stab your lobster in the head to try to kill it you are actually just paralysing it - and in the time it takes to actually die after you do this it gets very stressed and the meat inside suffers because of it.

(I am not sure how accurate the "no brain" bit is - this is simply what I have been told - but certainly lobsters IME cooked in rapidly boiling water are much less rubbery - and therefore appear to have been killed more quickly/humanely)

The water must be enough to totally cover the lobster.

For a 2lb lobster boil in the water for 3 mins - remove twist off the claws and return them to the water for another 5 mins. Once cooked cool the lobster quickly in a pan of cold water to stop the cooking process (the shell holds a lot of heat and your lobster will overcook if you just leave it on the side)

This doesn't totally cook the lobster it loosens the meat from the shell. Remove the meat from the lobster (taking care to take out the intestinal tract that runs through the tail) and leave meat to relax for 30mins+ before stage 2.

Stage 2 is basically poach the lobster meat in gently simmering liquid of your choice for 5 mins - the classic is to poach them in beurre monte which is an emulsified butter sauce thats *very* hard to make. (basically it's hot butter that remains emulsified and opaque looking at ~80degrees Celsius - boil a little water (about 40ml) in a pan and while whisking add small chunks of cold butter - keep the pan hot and keep whisking/adding more butter till you have enough to cook with - if it gets cold it'll split into oil and water - if you get it too hot it'll split - if you add too much butter too fast - it'll split - if it splits it's no good as a poaching medium.)

I find that a very mild olive oil(extra virgin or similar olive oils are way too strongly flavoured) or grapeseed oil with a good squeeze of lemon juice in it works very well - tho for raw lobster flavour slightly salted water works well too - the trick is to cook the lobster at about 80degrees Celsius - so that the water isn't quite boiling - too hot water denatures the protein in the meat and makes it tough and chewy. After loosening the meat as described at one of the restaurants I worked at we cooked lobster in vac pac bags in a warm water bath held at 72 degrees C. If you have access to these it's the ultimate - but way outside the range of most home kitchens.

Personally I think lobster is waaaay overrated.

Crab - for an awesome sandwich filling / salad element flake white crab meat - and carefuly remove any tiny fragments of shell still inside it season lightly with salt, - finely dice ripe mango - (about 1/5 mango to crab meat by weight) and then bind the whole lot together with a spoonful of good quality mayonnaise - about a desert spoon of mayo to 250g of crab mix is about right.

Mussels Clams etc. IME almost noone cooks these well.

For classic "Moules Mariniere" - prepare some very finely diced shallot, sweat in a saucepan until soft and leave to one side. Pick through the mussels - discard any open dead ones - and pick off the "beards" (little fragments of nylon rope that the mussels are attached to while they are farmed most often)

Get a good sized dry saucepan really hot - throw in your mussels and put a tight lid on top (the water on the outside clinging to the shells and the liquid inside the mussels is sufficient to steam them) almost immediately lots of steam should be produced inside the pan - steam them holding down the lid (using a cloth else you'll burn your fingers!) if it doesn't happen quickly add a shot or so of white wine to kickstart the process. High pressure(ish) steam your mussels for 1-2 mins - no more. Remove from heat and strain off the liquor.

using the same pan add your shallots (about 50g for 2 pints of mussels) sweat a little more - add a good dose of white wine (about 1/4 bottle) and reduce wine by about half - add in the mussel liquor taste - and add a little salt if required. Return mussels to pan and cook for a further 1-2 mins - throw in a good pinch of chopped parsley and if you like a good dash of double (heavy) cream and serve immediately.