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Croquillages

This salted cocktail snack is made with seashells such as cockles and mussels. The seashell 'fruit' is mixed with a recipe of savery cake dough and placed back in its shell. When the Croquillages are placed in the oven, the cake dough rises, turning the shell into a mold.

Recipe (serves: 6)

Ingredients:

3-4 kilos of mussels and cockles
Your own savoury cake dough
A reel of 0.15mm stainless steel wire
50 aluminium ferrules
A hammer
A rotary tool (Dremel type)
Hand drill
Oven

Preparation method:

- Buy some fresh mussels and cockles at the market.
- Wash them carefully under fresh water. Discard any open ones that won’t close when slightly squeezed.
- Pull out the fibrous beards and then knock off any barnacles with a large knife. Give the mussels another quick rinse to remove any little pieces of shell.
- Cut 6 lengths of metal wire (2meters) and bind them at the two ends. Join the two binds together and fix them into the chunk of a hand drill. Hook the opposite side and gently trigger to obtain a metal rope. Repeat the action to have five or six 1-meter length and cut it down into 10 cm lengths.
- Make a loop with each metal rope. Slide the two ends into a ferrule and hammer it down. Here is the locking system for the baking part. Repeat the action to obtain as many as you need.
- Select each seashell, remove the ‘fruit’ and store it in fresh water. Take each pair of shell and make a groove on each side with a Dremel. The two grooves will hold the metal loop while baking. Clean each shell.
- Prepare some savoury cake dough. Fill the seashell half way with dough mixed with its fruit. Close it and tighten it up with a metal loop by twisting the ferrule. Repeat the action for each shell.
- Preheat the oven to 220C. Transfer the prepared mussels and cockles to a tray. Bake for around 6 minutes (depending on your type of dough).
- Remove the metal loops and serve as a starter.