Category: Seafood

13th October 2014

Autumn spaghetti dish with scallops and ceps

Sometimes a dish creates itself when you walk around the market. The fishing season for scallops had opened and I wanted to do a simple spaghetti dish with it. The greengrocer’s had some of the last ceps – small brown button mushrooms from the Millevaches plateau in Corrèze, between Limoges and Ussel. I cooked the ceps and scallops separately in butter. Then I brought a […]

Fish Main dish Potatoes Seafood

8th September 2014

Sole with clams and crushed potatoes

We often go to Dieppe and buy fresh fish there on the quay, walk around the market and have lunch in one of the many restaurants. A favourite place often serves “crushed potatoes’ as a side dish – cooked potatoes crushed with a fork and some cream for smoothness. Back home, I tried my version to accompany a dish of small sole with a clam […]

Fish Main dish Seafood

2nd July 2014

Lobster on the BBQ

Lobster is a luxury ingredient because of its price. It is more expensive than prime beef and you can buy a whole lot of chicken for the same money. Or more than a week of vegetables. Lobster is also relatively rare. It is not threatened with extinction, yet, but it is fished with special cages or sometimes finds itself in dragnets. There are no reared […]

Pasta Seafood

5th January 2014

Ouistreham clams

We spent a Saturday at the Normandy coast, with nice moules frites — mussels and fries, in this case with ham, chorizo and cream — in Houlgate and large windy villa’s in Cabourg along a sandy beach. In Ouistreham, a small port down close to the Orne estuary from which ferries go to Portsmouth and Southampton, there are some fish stalls on the quai and […]

Seafood

16th December 2013

Swimming crabs

We regularly visit the coast at Dieppe and check out the market stalls where fish is sold almost immediately after the ships have landed their cargo. One of the market stalls had a crate full of live swimming crabs and I bought a kilo for several euros.

Pasta Seafood

10th December 2013

Spaghetti with clams

At the fresh market in our town we found a fishmonger from Brittany who had a good selection of sea food. We bought some, including fresh clams to use in an Italian inspired dish of spaghetti con vongole.

Main dish Noodles Seafood Vegetables

21st November 2013

Stir-fried lobster

The other day I found a lobster in my freezer. Not that it was hiding there but I had almost forgotten that I had bought two lobsters for a discount price one day at the close of the market. A defrosted lobster is less delicate in taste than a fresh one so for this specimen I opted to spice it up with an Asian touch […]

Main dish Seafood

15th October 2013

Shellfish from Normandy

Last weekend we went to the Normandy coast and ate fish, seafood and shellfish there. We also took some back to prepare at home. I made a platter with oysters, whelks and winkles. The last two you need to cook.

Fish Seafood Soup

10th October 2013

Lobster bisque, a creamy soup without cream

The last of my three recipes with one lobster. Okay, I had a relatively large lobster but this also works with smaller ones. After you have eaten, or presented, a lobster, you are left with a lot of broken shells as well as the soft parts in the head that not many people like to eat. You could throw it away, or use it for […]

Main dish Pasta Seafood

9th October 2013

Bucatini with lobster eggs and zucchini

Part two of three recipes I made with one single lobster. Here I will be using the eggs that were under the belly of the female lobster and which I scooped up with a spoon. The little biology I know of lobster is that the eggs first start inside the female. A female lobster mates after she has shed her shell – which lobsters do […]