Bahamas 3 - Conch Salad

All right readers...settle in. This one is a bloody beauty - the best so far - so sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.

Today, you're going to learn all about the local Bahamian delicacy, the one I have promised, the one that seems somewhat wacky...it's conch (pronounced "conk"). All I knew about conchs were that they were big big shells, all shiney and pink and very very pretty (and one featured prominently in Lord of the Flies). Well today I ate a number of the little critters that come out of those pretty shiney pink shells....and the whole experience was...well...wacky!

You can see in the first pic above, my mate, Scotty, who owns a little bar and restaurant at Runaway Bay where I spent the day today with a new yank friend. He came over to tell us his little bar was open for business, so I asked if he had any fresh conch. He said he could go out into the water and get it for me!!!! It seems he has a boat that he goes out in regularly, harvests about 100 conchs, then brings them back and pops them in the water inside a little underwater fence (so they don't crawl away), so he can go and get them when he needs them. And he needs them when he's making conch salad - and that's what we ordered, 2 conch salads - because they have to be super super fresh for the salad.

So, we followed ol' Scotty out into the water, him and his big plastic basket and goggles, to harvest his conchs. He grabbed about 6 of them then headed back to his little hut. He then walked us through the whole process of removing them from the shell, cleaning them, preparing them for eating, then making the salad. We had front row seats for the whole show, and some of it you can see above.

You can see in the second pic the claw or foot sticking out of the shell. The conch uses this to move himself around the place - he is stuck inside his shell...there's a vaccuum created in there, and this vaccuum needs to be broken to get him out. We watched as Scotty hammered a hole in the corner of the conch to break the vaccuum, then he went in with his knife and got the little sucker out - which you can see in the third pic.

Alot of what you see there is called "slop" - which is all the gross stuff that gets cut away - you can't eat it - he showed us the eyes, mouth, and even the penis (it was really small!!) of the little guy, then began to prepare it for eating. He had to cut and peel off the skin - it's very tough and can't be eaten, then he trimmed it down to it's white meat and the little claw. And just as an aside, I was speaking to one of the girls at the restaurant I went to tonight, and she was telling me that when they were kids, they used to suck on that claw to get all the last bits of conch meat - raw - just like we did on chicken or lamb cutlet bones!

You can see in pic 4 the cleaned conch ready to be cut - in fact Scotty is doing just that - he has cut onion, tomato and capsicum, as well as the conch. He wacked it all together with some lemon and organge juice, a bit of salt and pepper and voila - there's fresh conch salad. So, no cooking, you eat it raw!!! It's really just like a ceviche, which is a Peruvian dish of raw seafood, usually fish, marinated in citrus juice - the acid actually partially cooks the seafood - it's bloody delicious.

And then it was time to test. Looked great - don't you think???!!! So, in the gob it went, while we sat facing the most amazing beach, and I have to say...well...it um tasted...well a bit like...well rubber! It was sooooooo tough - and we had to chew chew chew!!! The actual salsa that he made was divine, and I'll be repeating that - simple and so fresh and delicious, but yeah, the conch was a little underwhelming!

I had a chat with Scotty afterwards about this whole toughness thing. He tells me that when they grill or fry it they bash the hell out of it first to tenderise it, and he says it becomes a lot softer and much more tender.

So sportsfans, or should I say foodfans...stay tuned as I intend to check out this really bizarro creature cooked in a few different ways! And a big thanks to Scotty who answered all my billion questions with good grace (poor guy)!!