Posted on Mon, 6 Jun 2011

A Picture Show Of Clams & Cooks

Show and tell time! This is a follow up story from my earlier PUTIEN review, which is also filed under Binge. We had the privilege of heading behind the scenes into the busy kitchen of PUTIEN to watch the chef in action with his bamboo clams just before consuming them ourselves for lunch. We don’t often get to snap pictures like these, so since we did this time, we thought we’d share it with you. Here’s what Chef Chen Shijie did to get his bivalves from hibernation to hitting the table.

These creatures had been harvested about 24 hours before from China, and chilled to about 4C into a senseless state of ‘slumber’. During this time, they are shipped, dry, from China to Singapore in large styrofoam boxes. The salt water had just been poured over these guys to awaken them when the photo above was taken, so they have not started to spout yet. They did that about 5 minutes later when they decided to undertake their ‘constitution’ and cleaned themselves by spurting water throguh their systems in every random direction. It’s not a good idea to stand too close, as I discovered.

The chef washes them, scrapes them clean and snips off the muscle of the clam to prevent them from opening up. He then lays them neatly on hot plate filled with a bed of spiced salt.

Then they are baked as you see above. No need for ovens – the naked flame will do. The hot plate is covered with a lid and placed directly over the gas fire for exactly 7 minutes.

Meanwhile, he starts preparing the wok to fry the bamboo clam omelette. As we wait for the other clams to bake, are you curious how the rest of the kitchen looks like? Here goes….