Name: Rica rica clams
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Indonesian
Ingredients: ½ teaspoon salt; juice of a lime; thumb of ginger, peeled; lime juice, to taste; 4 large red chillies, mostly seeded; 2 tablespoons oil; 3 tomatoes, chopped; bunch of spring onions (scallions), chopped; 4 lime leaves; 4 small red Asian shallots, peeled; 1 kg (2 lb 4 oz) clams, cleaned; 4 garlic cloves, peeled

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Fire Islands

By Eleanor Ford

Published 2019

About

Rica rica is a spicy signature of Sulawesi. The ‘c’ is pronounced ‘ch’ as in chilli. And chillies are a key component, though I tend to make these clams hot rather than incendiary. Do add an extra bird’s eye chilli to the spice paste if you like; Minahasan people would approve.

Ingredients

1 kg (2 lb 4 oz) clams, cleaned
2

Method

Soak the clams in well salted water for 20 minutes to remove any grit.

Meanwhile, make the bumbu spice paste. Roughly chop all the aromatics and put them in a food processor or high-speed blender with the lime juice and salt. Whizz together to make a rough paste.

Heat the oil in a lidded pan and scrape in the bumbu. Fry, stirring often, until fragrant and it has lost the harsh r