Berberechos a la Marinera

Berberechos a la marinera are Galician, from the tidal rías where cockles carry the clean taste of salt water and the Atlantic. What makes them a la marinera, rather than berberechos al vapor, is the little sauce: onion and garlic cooked sweet in olive oil, white wine, pimentón, and the liquor released by the shells. It should coat them lightly, not bury them. At a Galician table, they arrive with bread because leaving that sauce behind would be foolish.

Purging decides this dish. Give the live cockles two hours in cold water salted like the sea, 35 grams per litre, then lift them out instead of tipping the sandy water over them again. Build the sofrito, the slow onion base, until deep gold; add the pimentón off the heat so it stays sweet, and cover the cockles only until they open. Leave them longer and they turn from tender to rubber. A small shellfish does not become nobler through suffering.

If berberechos aren't sold where you live, use small live almejas such as Manila or littleneck clams. The dish then becomes almejas a la marinera, with firmer meat and another minute or two of cooking, but the same Galician method. Canned cockles are excellent as conservas, preserved shellfish, but not here; they can't give the sauce their fresh liquor. In the Margin I wrote one practical line: salt the purging water, not the sauce. Siempre sale, si lo sigues.