Summer favorites of a Michelin two-star chef

[Photo provided to China Daily]

With two Michelin stars under his belt, Fabrice Vulin has just taken over as executive chef at top French restaurant The Tasting Room in Macao. He shares his recipe for a summer favourite.

What summer ingredients do you use most?

Courgettes and tomatoes. You can deep-fry flowering courgettes in batter, bake, sauté, purée, chop them in a salad with mint – so many possible combinations. Likewise, there are so many things you can do with tomatoes: mousses, jellies, cold in a salad or cooked.

What's today's recipe?

Razor clams and cockles. You can serve this as a light first course or before dinner with drinks – it goes well with a glass of rosé, for example.

Ingredients

Razor clams and cockles on a leaf of soy-lime jelly

For the jelly:

20cl sweet soy sauce, 1 unwaxed lime, 2g agar-agar

For the shellfish topping:

1kg cockles, 1kg razor clams

For assembly and garnish:

1 unwaxed orange, 5cl olive oil, 150g coarse salt, a few sprigs of chervil and Thai basil, dill

Fabrice Vulin [Photo provided to China Daily]

Recipe

To make the jelly

Put the soy sauce, 5cl of water, the zest of the lime and half of its juice in a saucepan. Add the agar-agar. Bring to a boil over low heat, whisking. Pour the hot jelly onto a tray lined with cling film, spreading it to a thickness of about 2mm. Refrigerate.

To make the shellfish topping

Clean the cockles in several changes of cold water. Heat a pot (no oil) and arrange the cockles in it. Allow them to open naturally, stirring with a spoon. Spread out on a tray, remove the flesh and refrigerate. Do the same with the razor clams, keeping only the firm white flesh. Save 12 shells after cleaning them to remove all grit and sand.

To assemble

Cut the soy-lime jelly into strips the same size as the razor clam shells and line each shell with a strip of jelly. On each shell, delicately alternate pieces of razor clam meat and cockle meat, covering the shell completely. Grate the orange zest into the olive oil and garnish each assembled razor clam with a few drops. Decorate each one with the sprigs of chervil and basil, and add a generous grinding of pepper.

Dampen the coarse salt with a little water, add a bit of chopped dill and cut out four little round bases (diameter approximately the length of a razor clam shell). Place three of the assembled razor clams on each base. Chill and serve.

A tip from the chef:

Different types of shellfish can be added according to the season: littleneck clams, cherrystone clams, mussels or scallops.