Britain and Ireland · Volume 33, The Bakestone, the Broth and the Salt Marsh
Laverbread, Cockles and Bacon
The Gower and Swansea Market
Illustration
- Time
- 20 minutes
The Gower and Swansea Market's own breakfast, and the pairing that gave laverbread the nickname "Welsh caviar," a line widely attributed to Richard Burton though this chapter could not trace it to a primary interview.
As tradition built it
VisitWales (Welsh Government) gives its own version of this plate: serves 4, ready in about 20 minutes (5 minutes prep, 15 to cook).
Ingredients
- a generous spoonful hand-harvested laver, washed in seven changes of water
- 120g, or to taste laverbread paste
- enough to coat oatmeal
- 4 slices bacon rashers
- 100g Penclawdd cockles, freshly boiled
- 1, optional egg, fried, optional
Method
- Wash the hand-harvested laver in seven changes of water to remove all grit and sand.
- Simmer slowly for several hours until it collapses into a smooth, dark greeny-black paste, then chop fine.
- Work the laverbread through a light coating of oatmeal, enough to coat and no more.
- Fry in bacon fat alongside rashers of bacon and freshly boiled Penclawdd cockles, cooking only until the oatmeal crisps at the edges, since laverbread itself needs only warming through, not further cooking.
- Serve traditionally with a fried egg alongside.
Notes
No credible source gives this dish fixed quantities; it is built to the pan and the eater.
What a modern chef changes
Laverbread butter and laverbread bread, with cockles held at a precise sous vide doneness
Method
- Make a laverbread butter: fold laverbread through softened butter and roll into a log to firm in the fridge, in the manner of the laver butter served with bread at Gorse in Cardiff.
- Make a laverbread-veined bread dough, rolled in oats before baking, in the manner of Beach House's own "laverbread bread," built specifically to ease a diner unfamiliar with the seaweed's texture into eating it.
- Cook the cockles sous vide at 55°C for four minutes rather than boiled, holding them at exactly the point of doneness rather than the few seconds' margin a rolling boil allows.
- Dress the cockles simply in brown butter and a squeeze of lemon.
- Serve with a slice of the laverbread bread and a curl of the laverbread butter alongside, rather than the traditional fried combination.