This is not a traditional Ts’msyen  recipe!

We have been experimenting with g̱a̱boox (cockles) to find a healthier alternative to frying cockles. The usual way it to butterfly, flour and cook them in a shallow fry (mmmm ts’maatk! [ts’m/*aatk] – good tasting; tasty; sweet tasting) .

Steve and I have different philosophies on making curry. Steve’s recipe is: 1 can of coconut milk + curry paste + protein + 1-2 veg.

My recipe is: find the biggest pot in the house + coconut milk + every left over veg in the fridge to maximize food biodiversity and nutrients + all the spices in the world + at least 2 different kinds of nuts (for crunch)… optional: some sort of protein (doesn’t have to be meat). I was vegetarian* for a while in university, because I was too broke to afford red meat or chicken and didn’t really know how to cook it – so my early curry’s were vegetarian. Also, curry is known for being flavourful and is typically full of protein, so why would you even need to add meat?

*Vegetarian, but I always had frozen fish and jarred salmon on hand. Don’t know why I never thought about adding halibut to curry – Steve’s way ahead in the curry game in that sense.

The last time we made cockle curry, I made my typical curry, noted above, and added cockles. Steve liked it, but I thought the cockle flavour got lost.

This time around we decided to pare down and add pineapple, and the result was luk’wil ts’maatk (very tasty!). We didn’t take a lot of photos while we were making this because we didn’t realize how good it was going to turn out! We still used whatever was leftover in the fridge (lol), but next time we could even go without the peppers (maybe add peas?) to focus more on the pineapple-cockle combo.

We loosely based our recipe off this Thai Pineapple Chicken Curry recipe (but using what we had in the fridge). This is where we got the idea to add a little sugar: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/86005/thai-pineapple-chicken-curry/

Ingredients

1/2 a small onion, chopped into 1” chunks

A couple cloves of garlic , chopped fine (if you have time, or garlic powder also works in a pinch)

1” of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped fine

1 carrot, chopped into 1” slices

1 celery stalk, chopped into 1” slices

1/4 red bell pepper, chopped into 1” squares

1/4 orange bell pepper, chopped into 1” squares

1/4 green bell pepper, chopped into 1” squares

1 can of coconut milk

1/2 a small bottle of green curry paste (leftover from the fridge lol)

Several dashes of fish sauce

1/4 to 1/3 cup white sugar (eyeballed it lol)

2 stocks of lemongrass, sliced lengthwise

Spices to taste: cayenne pepper if you like spice; ground cumin, turmeric and/or smoked paprika are also tasty; pinch of salt and/or black pepper (Steve usually has to remind me to add the salt)

Handful of cherry tomatoes, cut in half (leftover from the fridge as well)

1 bag of cockles, partially thawed and diced into 1/2 inch chunks (g̱a̱boox are easier to cut if if they’re half frozen, and they thaw pretty quick). We usually freeze our g̱a̱boox in meal size bags for two people – approximately 12 cockles

1 1/2 cup fresh pineapple, diced

Rice, cooked in the rice cooker with a spoonful of coconut oil. I think we used brown basmati rice this time

Naan bread

Parsley and/or hemp hearts for garnish

We started out by frying the onion, garlic and ginger for a minute on medium high heat with a bit of coconut oil in a medium wok. Then we added the carrot, celery and bell peppers for another few minutes, just to sear them.

Next we added the coconut milk, curry paste, fish sauce, sugar and lemongrass. We brought the mixture to a simmer, and turned down the heat. Once everything was combined, we did a taste test and added spices. We looked in the fridge again, and added cherry tomatoes (they don’t take long to cook at all).

Once everything was nearly cooked (carrots, peppers etc), we added the g̱a̱boox right into the wok, which were now 80% thawed from sitting on the counter. We let those cook for 5-10 mins on simmer until the largest chunk was cooked through.

We almost forgot the pineapple (key ingredient!) so I quickly diced up about 1 1/2 cups of fresh pineapple as the cockles were cooking. Once the cockles were cooked, the rice cooker finished cooking, and naan bread warmed up in the oven – we were ready to eat.

Hope you enjoy this recipe! This is just our recollection of how we made the curry, but in real life there is a lot of frantic washing of vegetables, dicing veggies, 30 second dance parties, and looking in the fridge and cupboards for ingredients.

And don’t feel like you have to follow this recipe exactly – just use what you have available. We never make the same curry twice!

T’oyaxsut ‘nüün – thank you Mr. Campbell for providing the pronunciation for the Sm’algyax  vocabulary.

S&L – April 15, 2020