This weekend I went diving for conch... in the deep permafrost of the freezers at Wing Yip, a Chinese cash and carry in Cricklewood. Neptune knows how long the poor molluscs had been there for, torn from the white sand blanket of a warm Caribbean sea bed, plastic packed in Birmingham and now trapped in an icy prison underneath a bag of fish balls.
Conch pronounced 'konk' is the Bahamas national dish. The 700 island archipelago is obsessed by this glamorous tropical cousin of our grey northern whelk and have devised countless ways to cook it. I settled on a trio of Conch Chowder, Conch Salad and Cracked Conch (deep fried). Finding fresh live conch in London proved difficult, even a post night out foray into Billingsgate was fruitless. Well, not entirely, I came away with some cockles and a 3kg octopus which I'd wrestled off a Portuguese lady.
Frozen it was, not even the exotic stalls offering things like snapper, barracuda and parrotfish could give me any pointers. This scuppered the conch salad somewhat, ideally the conch should be live and squirming when it's cut up and garnished with lime juice, scotch bonnet, onions, peppers, celery and tomato, 'soused' as they say in the West Indies. The shrivelled defrosted creatures emerged looking like Ötzi the Ice Man so I gave them a brief immersion in boiling water. The same rules apply to conch as squid, you either flash cook it or simmer it. Once the salad had been put together I left it for a couple of hours to mulch.
As suspected the conch itself was pretty flavourless and needed pepping up with salt and scotch bonnet. As a whole the salad was really refreshing and I could see it working well with fresh seafood, live whelks are fairly easy to get hold of and probably the best alternative over here.
Despite the salads failings, the frozen conch lent itself well to the other two dishes. Conch Chowder a spicy, chunky soup was delicious and a couple of hours of simmering brought out some real flavour from the meat and helped tenderize it. I found the recipe through a link sent to me by the Bahamian High Commission:
http://www.bahamasgateway.com/recipes/conchchowder.htm
Cracked Conch was incredible! Though it takes some work to tenderize (note the mallet in the photo above), even my sister who gagged at the site of the raw conch was tucking in to it deep fried. Like calamares but richer, it's a simple case of dipping them in egg yolk (with a splash of milk) and then flour, and frying until golden. Again I really want to try this with fresh whelk.
Plans are afoot to open London's first 'Conch Shack' as soon as I find a reliable source.
Conch pronounced 'konk' is the Bahamas national dish. The 700 island archipelago is obsessed by this glamorous tropical cousin of our grey northern whelk and have devised countless ways to cook it. I settled on a trio of Conch Chowder, Conch Salad and Cracked Conch (deep fried). Finding fresh live conch in London proved difficult, even a post night out foray into Billingsgate was fruitless. Well, not entirely, I came away with some cockles and a 3kg octopus which I'd wrestled off a Portuguese lady.
Frozen it was, not even the exotic stalls offering things like snapper, barracuda and parrotfish could give me any pointers. This scuppered the conch salad somewhat, ideally the conch should be live and squirming when it's cut up and garnished with lime juice, scotch bonnet, onions, peppers, celery and tomato, 'soused' as they say in the West Indies. The shrivelled defrosted creatures emerged looking like Ötzi the Ice Man so I gave them a brief immersion in boiling water. The same rules apply to conch as squid, you either flash cook it or simmer it. Once the salad had been put together I left it for a couple of hours to mulch.
As suspected the conch itself was pretty flavourless and needed pepping up with salt and scotch bonnet. As a whole the salad was really refreshing and I could see it working well with fresh seafood, live whelks are fairly easy to get hold of and probably the best alternative over here.
Despite the salads failings, the frozen conch lent itself well to the other two dishes. Conch Chowder a spicy, chunky soup was delicious and a couple of hours of simmering brought out some real flavour from the meat and helped tenderize it. I found the recipe through a link sent to me by the Bahamian High Commission:
http://www.bahamasgateway.com/recipes/conchchowder.htm
Cracked Conch was incredible! Though it takes some work to tenderize (note the mallet in the photo above), even my sister who gagged at the site of the raw conch was tucking in to it deep fried. Like calamares but richer, it's a simple case of dipping them in egg yolk (with a splash of milk) and then flour, and frying until golden. Again I really want to try this with fresh whelk.
Plans are afoot to open London's first 'Conch Shack' as soon as I find a reliable source.
