I’ve been harbouring a memory of these for eight years now, but this is the first time I’ve actually cooked them myself. I came across them while I was on holiday in Porto Ercole, at a little restaurant called Il Greco over the way in Porto Santo Stefano. I sat by the water’s edge, voluptuously savouring the menu while the waiters brought plates of lozenge-shaped toasts covered with the still warm meat of finely chopped mussels and clams, deep with garlic and sprinkled with parsley. It was when I was cooking the pasta with mussels for the book shoot that the briney, winey smell of the steaming seafood made me desperate to recreate these. And yes, they’re fiddly, but so very, very good.
You will have a little pool of marine juices left after you’ve chopped and smeared the seafood for the crostini and the best way I can think of for using this up is to dunk the remaining half of your French loaf straight into it and slurp it all up. You can of course, though, just bag it up as it is and freeze it so you have a small but concentrated stash of deep-scented fish stock to use at some later date. And once you get into the habit of crostini-production (and I find I do), you might find it easier anyway to buy a baguette, or ficelle (either will do), slice it and bag it up and keep it in the deep-freeze to be oil-dabbled and toasted whenever you want.
Half a skinny baguette (in other words, a ficelle)
approx. 4 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic minced
2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley, plus more to decorate
2 tablespoons olive oil
750g mussels
500g clams
1 tablespoon vermouth or white wine
Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6. Cut the bread into slices, about half to three-quarters of a centimetre thick: in other words, neither too thick, nor too thin. You need about 25 slices for the amount of chopped seafood topping here. Using a pastry brush or your fingers, dab the bread, on both sides, with the olive oil and sit these lightly oil-brushed slices on a rack over a roasting tin and bake for about 5–10 minutes, turning once. Frankly, it’s just a matter of cooking until the slices begin to turn gold, and this takes more time the fresher the bread. In other words, if you’ve got stale bread, use it for this. When the bread is toasted and gold, remove it from the oven and leave it to cool while you get on with the mussels and clams.
Put the garlic and parsley into a large saucepan with the oil and cook, stirring, over a low heat for a couple of minutes making sure it doesn’t colour. Tip in the cleaned mussels and clams, turn the heat to high, add the tablespoon of vermouth or wine and clamp on the lid. Cook for 4–5 minutes, shaking the pan a few times to disperse the shells until they are all gaping open. Remove the lid and take off the heat so that the shellfish can cool a little, then pick out the meat with your fingers.
Chop the shellfish flesh finely with a mezzaluna or knife (you can use the processor but be careful not to turn everything into undifferentiated mush), then spread on to the crostini and sprinkle over some more chopped parsley. Eat while still warm.
Makes approx. 25.