Shellfish desires: Hix's ideas for oysters

The native oyster season is with us again and oysters really need very little doing to them apart from opening and eating. I don't even feel the need to serve the regular accompaniments – green and red Tabasco and shallot vinegar – because these oysters have such a distinctive flavour of their own that it would be sacrilege to mess with them. Our British farmers look destined for a bumper harvest this year, and will benefit from the situation in France where the harvest promises to be poor, due, sadly, to the death of a high percentage of young juvenile oysters.

Robin Hancock, of the London oyster house Wright Brothers, tells me the cause is still unknown, but history reveals that oysters are quite susceptible to disease, and that entire stocks that have been carefully nurtured for years can easily be wiped out .

I'm not going to give you a bunch of oyster recipes, as natives are best enjoyed au naturel in my opinion, and I've already waxed lyrical about my beef flank and oyster pie. So we are just going to create a few simple seafood treats and include the odd oyster here and there.

Fisherman's rice

Serves 4-6

I had this dish recently at a restaurant in the coastal town of El Golfo in Lanzarote, where I was on holiday. It's basically a paella using whatever fresh fish and seafood is to hand. You can recreate this by using a selection of scallops, squid, prawns, cockles, clams, mussels and so on. Timing is crucial, though: you have to add the fish at the right point so it doesn't over-cook. You can buy special paella rice which is plump, short-grain rice; otherwise use risotto rice.

1 onion, peeled, halved and finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
1 small red pepper, seeded and cut into 1/2cm dice
4-5tbsp olive oil
A good pinch of saffron
300g paella or risotto rice
1tbsp tomato purée
1 litre fish stock
200g squid, cleaned, cut into rough 2cm pieces
10 medium-sized whole prawns
150g clams, washed
150g mussels, de-bearded and cleaned

Pre-heat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6. Heat a wide shallow pan or paella dish on a medium heat on the stove, and cook the onion, garlic and red pepper in the olive oil for 2-3 minutes, stirring every so often until they soften. Add the rice and saffron and continue stirring for a minute or so.

Add half the stock, season and stir well and continue cooking on the stove for a couple of minutes. Add the rest of the stock and cook in the oven for 15 minutes. Stir in the seafood and return to the oven until the rice is plump and the mussels and clams have opened; serve immediately.

Fried oysters and laverbread

Serves 4

The Independent's editor-in-chief Simon Kelner was in for lunch when we first opened Hix Oyster and Chop House, in London's Smithfield, and suggested this dish while he was making his mind up between the rabbit brawn and the boiled duck egg with asparagus soldiers. We had laverbread in the house and oysters – obviously – and rustled this up for him. The dish appears on the menu quite often now and Simon reckons this Welsh seaweed is the nearest thing you can get to caviar.

Don't try this with natives by the way; as I've said they need no special treatment.

12 rock oysters, shucked
100-150g laverbread
100g butter

Gently heat the laverbread in a saucepan with about half of the butter. Heat the rest of the butter in a frying pan until it's foaming and literally toss the oysters for 10-15 seconds in the butter and remove from the heat.

Spoon the laverbread on to warmed plates and scatter the oysters and butter over.

Crab on toast

Serves 4

Fresh crab meat is one of my all-time favourite foods; don't get fobbed off with the pasteurised stuff you see in the fishmonger, it's just not worth it. For a 2kg crab, plunge into boiling salted water, return to the boil and simmer for about 30 minutes. There are two "humane" methods of preparing the crab prior to cooking: a sturdy skewer between the eyes to kill it instantly; or placing the crab in the freezer to send it to sleep.

The white and brown meat from a 2kg crab
4tbsp homemade or good-quality mayonnaise
4 slices of wholemeal bread
1 lemon or lime, quartered

Mix the brown crab meat with the mayonnaise and season to taste. Toast the bread on both sides and butter it. Spoon on the brown crab meat then pile on the white. Serve immediately with the wedges of lemon.

Seashore salad

Serves 4

We developed this recipe when we opened Hix Oyster and Fish House in Lyme Regis a few months back. We have plenty of wild sea vegetables on the beach, and herbs like wild fennel growing on the cliffs. With a daily changing menu featuring everything from razor clams, surf clams, scallops, mussels, lobster, crab and, of course, oysters, it seemed a shame to have a dish that didn't give the customer a bit of everything going. If you're struggling to get wild sea vegetables then samphire and a few small salad leaves will do.

A couple of handfuls of sea vegetables like small leaves of sea beet, samphire, sea purslane, wild fennel, trimmed of any woody stalks and washed

4 scallops, cleaned
A couple of tablespoonfuls of freshly picked white crab meat
150-200g mussels, cleaned
150-200g cockles or surf clams, cleaned
50ml white wine
4 medium scallops removed from the shell
4 oysters, shucked and left in the half shell

Other seafood such as cooked lobster or prawns, etc

For the dressing

The juice of half a lemon
1tbsp white wine or tarragon vinegar
4-5tbsp rapeseed oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Put the cockles and mussels in a pan with the white wine and cook on a high heat with a lid on for 3-4 minutes, shaking the pan every so often until they are all open. Tip into a colander, reserving the juices. Strain this liquid through a fine-mesh sieve into a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Halve the scallops; lay them in a small dish and pour the hot liquid over them and leave to cool.

Bring a pan of lightly salted water to the boil and blanch the samphire, sea purslane, or whichever sea vegetable you are using, for 20 seconds then refresh under the cold tap. Whisk all of the ingredients together for the dressing with a little of the liquid from the scallops and season to taste.

To serve the salad, remove half of the mussels and cockles from the shell and arrange with the rest of the ingredients on individual plates or one large serving dish. Spoon over the dressing and sit the oyster on top.