Rica rica clams

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

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

Asia
Indonesia
Sulawesi
Fish course
Pescatarian
Spicy
South East Asia
Gluten-free

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