Seaside foraging? It's a shore thing

From mussels to majestic brown crabs, there are rich culinary pickings on the beachRemember those seaside holidays when you spent every spare minute squinting, net poised, into the mysterious depths of a rock pool? You'd lever up a stone. Look, shrimps! And a green shore crab, scuttling under that clump of seaweed. And what's the little fish over there? A blenny? Or is it a goby? Whatever, into the bucket it goes with the rest of the live treasure.Ah, happy days. But the thing is, I'm 47, and that's pretty much how I still spend school holidays. Having two children has little to do with it, other than providing an excuse. These days, I'm looking for dinner rather than revelling in nature, yet the basic kit is still the same: hands, net, bucket.Mussels, cockles and clams are the easiest catch: you just bend down and pick them up. Mussels attach themselves to just about anything they can get hold of along the tideline, from rocks and gravel beds to seaweed and jetties; delicious seafood just waiting to be nabbed. Cockles and clams are harder work, but not much: they bury themselves when the tide goes out, but when it starts coming back, telltale nipples of sand appear along the shore as they prepare to greet the returning waters. We often end up with a kilo or two of venus or surf clams (they retail at up to �11/kg ? see where I'm coming from now?) and, if we're lucky, palourdes (they're the ones with a neat criss-cross pattern on their shell), the sweetest of the lot.As with all molluscs, discard live ones with broken or open shells, and don't eat those that don't open after cooking. Also, most sea creatures are subject to minimum landing sizes, closed seasons and the rest. For a full lowdown, I recommend John Wright's brilliant book, Edible Seashore.Other molluscs that find their way into our bucket include whelks and winkles, both sea snails that are as easy to collect as clams and mussels.Brown shrimps are also a piece of cake, hanging round in big, dumb gangs against sea walls and in larger rock pools. Just scoop them up in the net ? few summer meals beat peeling and eating your way through a bowl of just-boiled shrimps. The bigger prawns, meanwhile, are mostly nocturnal and lurk in the shadows, under overhanging rocks and seaweed.It's not just these usual suspects you'll find, though. From the same south Devon beach (no, I won't let on where) we also collect razor clams, dabs, the occasional squid and last year a rather confused adult skate stranded in a rock pool (we took it back to the sea).Above all, though, we're after crabs, be they velvet swimmers, spiders or brown. Velvets (which, along with spider crabs, can be found in rock pools) are evil little buggers with furry backs, scary red eyes and snap-happy, lightning-fast claws; no wonder they're also called devil crabs. But they don't half make fantastic soup. Unless you're squeamish, don't even bother with the usual fiddly crab prep ? just cook them whole in a court bouillon or shellfish stock, and blend.Then there's the king of our native seafood, the brown crab which, taste-wise, knocks the socks off any fancy-pants lobster. They retreat into crevices and holes in the rocks as the tide recedes, so you just have to find their hideout. Some people use a crab hook ? essentially, a pole with a coat hanger on the end ? to drag them out, but we prefer a more primitive approach: stick an arm down the hole, grab a claw and pull. But take care ? a decent sized specimen can break an adult's finger, let alone a child's. I've got the bent digits to prove it.Once you get the hang of it, though, you'll be hooked (sorry). My son Freddie has been catching them since he was five and is now a more accomplished crabber than I am. But then he's got an unfair advantage: his little arms fit down holes my big mitts don't stand a chance of getting into.Food & drinkFishBob Granleeseguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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