The taste of fresh shellfish Clams are perhaps my favourite. A bowl of clams, flavoured with chilli, or porcini, or paprika, or pancetta, with a splash of wine and a hunk of bread is just delicious, or if you add chickpeas, white beans or pasta you will have a hearty and inexpensive dinner in a couple of minutes. I buy 'palourde" clams from Dorset, and try to choose the smallest ones available. Cockles generally work in the same recipes but don't have the depth of flavour. The possibilities with crab are endless: mix the brown and the white meat, add a bit of chilli, a few fennel seeds, a squeeze of lemon and a glug of oil and you have the most brilliant sauce for pasta. All it requires to serve is a spring of parsley finely chopped and a splash of water to loosen it up. Or devise a new salad, such as the one here, which combines crab with the sorrel-like sharpness of a cox apple to great effect. Some people foolishly shun the brown meat of a crab but this is the best bit in my opinion. Rich, smooth, with twice the depth of taste of the white meat, it costs practically nothing when bought on its own, and is delicious spread on toast with nothing more than a pinch of black pepper, and a squeeze of lemon to cut through the richness. Mussels are one of the least popular items on my menu at Dock Kitchen. I can understand why they've got a bad reputation - the mounds of smelly mussels sold with greasy "frites" in restaurants across the country are enough to put anyone off - but when they're fresh and cooked in a velvety coconut broth, as in the recipe below, they're unrecognisable. I wish more people would give them a chance. In order to be properly fresh, shellfish must be alive. By this I mean cockles, mussels and clams must be closed when raw and open when cooked - discard them if they're not - and crabs, lobsters and langoustine should be moving (although I would advise sending them to sleep in the freezer before you cook them). If you're ever worried about the providence of your catch, just remember that no fish, shell or otherwise, should ever smell fishy. Twitter @stevieparle