Hook and Ladder Cookery Classes Part 6 : Shellfish with Michael Quinn

Shellfish seem to scare quiet a few people, I suppose their are many worries will I over cook these??? How will I know if these are fresh???? Will I have to kill it myself???

We cooked 5 different types of shellfish but sadly only had time to make 4 dishes. I have to say this was probably my favorite class this far. I myself had never really known how easy and tasty shellfish could be. My absolute favorite was the mussels so today i will share this supper fast super tasty recipe with you guys. the scallops where also divine. ( spoon licking good sauce)

The crabs and the lobster where obviously still alive so some of the class seemed quiet uncomfortable with this idea. I think the fact that all our food now days is so accessible and we have just forgotten that in order to get it on our table someone does in fact have to take the care to kill it. This obviously seems to make people squeamish about cooking live food i guess. Personally I have no issue with it at all every item of meat we consume comes from a live creature. But I can see how to some this would seem difficult, to me it mostly is delicious.

breaded garlic mussels:

you will need

a bottle of white wine
butter
garlic
an onion
bread crumbs
spinach

to make the garlic butter first. chop up 10 cloves of garlic get them as small as you can mix them in to the soften butter and chop up sweated spinach to give the butter colour. then make a roll out of the butter inside clingfilm. this will allow you to freeze the butter in order to be able to use it as often as you wish.


to cook the mussels you will need to put win into a sauce pan add cut up onion and crushed garlic put this on the hottest setting your hob has add the mussels and they steaming should take no more than 30-40 seconds. once the mussels open remove them from th pot. take off the top shell. cover the mussels in plenty of garlic butter then dip them into the bread crumbs. pop these into the oven for 5 to 6 minutes until bubbling. and you will have the tastiest mussels known to man.

all the shellfish for this class was acquired in billy burkes fish shop to guarantee its freshness. you can order from this shop lobsters once you give a days notice you more than likely will have one. unless the weather is particularly bad.

please find attached the photos of this class. I was enjoying eating far too much in this class.


lobster orange salad with spinach and samphyre

 coquille st jacques sans la coquille  as it is illegal to sell the shells in ireland we improvised with spuds. a very irish alternative.

 the mussels with the mostest :)

 let the steaming begin

 samphyre crunchy sea veg