Cardiff Cockles

I spent a lot of time in June and July traveling and so with that, and trying to juggle work and other commitments when I was home, I have completely neglected the blogging. So here I am with the first of a few posts to try and catch up on what I’ve been doing food-wise.

First, I have to ask, is it just me, or is it a no-no to handle someone else’s groceries? I was at the grocery store yesterday and I had some things on the conveyer belt. No one was behind me, so I didn’t stack my purchases all together in order to make room for anyone else. After a moment, a woman comes up behind me. Rather than starting to use the inches of conveyer belt available to her, she reaches forward and pushes my prospective purchases forward, and then starts unloading her basket. What is the etiquette around that? Is it OK to handle someone else’s stuff like that? I thought it was rude and a do-not-do myself. Not that I said anything…I almost never do, because when I do it here on the island it invariably turns out to be someone that knows me or my family and then it’s just embarrassing that I told them off/ honked the horn in the car/ asked them not to touch my groceries.

So part of June and July was spent in Cardiff (Wales). Up above is a picture of the back entrance to the city market where you can find stalls of food: fish, meat, vegetables, fruit, bread. And teapots, pets, and clotheslines. I made a special trip there to try cockles. I had seen Rick Stein enjoying cockles (a type of shellfish) on one of his food programs. They looked wonderful and it reminded me that my grandfather had always loved them.

Perfect, I decided — a great little thing to do next time I was in Wales. I would go to the market to buy and eat some cockles as a kind of culinary tribute to a man I love and miss.

Once in Cardiff, you go down to the High Street. From there you go into the Cardiff market and walk past all the stalls — the teapots and vegetables — and follow a smell of fish. At the fish counter there are at least two dozen types of fish and shellfish on ice, with men in hats behind the low oval counter. You can also buy laver, a kind of minced seaweed, to make laverbread there, a traditional Welsh dish which I didn’t appreciate as a child, but eating sushi has now given me a taste for it.

“Yes, my lovely, what would you like?” the man in the white coat and hat asks me. Sternly ignoring the flies drawn out by the heat of the day, I ask for a hundred grams of cockles. He piles them into a white styrofoam container with a two-pronged wooden fork, and I hand over some coin. To the side is a stainless steel counter, the white-tiled wall mirrored along its length, and you can stand there to consume your food. To hand are malt vinegar and salt, and like any member of the Commonwealth, I know that salt and vinegar are always destined for chips and for fish in any form.

I took a moment to think of my grandfather. This was his favorite, and I am prepared to adore cockles forever in his memory. I shake over the vinegar and salt, pierce a cold plump morsel, and pop it in my mouth. I chew, and hit grit. I think the salt must be unusually hard, and try again. More grit in between my molars. Maybe I got a cockle that wasn’t well cleaned. I keep assuring myself that soon, any minute now, I’ll find one that isn’t full of what seems to be sand. I finally give up. The tribute is over, and I do not love cockles. My big moment is ashes and sand in my mouth.

I checked with my mum later and she said that cockles should not have grit; they were not cleaned properly. Those cockle-cleaning bastards! They ruined my culinary tribute and made me eat sand. Repeatedly.

I will try again next time I go…but I will buy the cockles elsewhere.