Steamed Cockles with Bacchus and Samphire

If you can find them, large fresh cockles are a real treat - as good as any clams. The problem with cockles is their gritty reputation, acquired from those little tubs of mass-produced cockles you can buy along with crabsticks and prawn shapes. Clearly there isn’t the same attention paid to pre-cook washing in the factories that a chef would assign.

To clean cockles properly, you need to leave them under running water for about 15 minutes, agitating them every so often with your han