I love to entertain. The days before I have a dinner party are spent ruminating over what I will serve, deciding what is at the peak of freshness, thumbing through food magazines for inspiration, furiously cleaning the apartment, and oh yes, thinking of how each of my guests will get along with one another. Though I may think long and hard, about what foods to serve, often times I resort to the same standbys. In the winter this usually means an entree that is hearty, rib-sticking, and often times braised. This way I can prepare it, and forget about it for hours, letting the oven do its work.

But in the summertime, when the weather is warm, and the produce is displaying its array of bright hues, I favor salads. But salads? Some guests may be a tad disappointed when they sit down for a meal at my house, and all that I serve are some beautiful sliced tomatoes, their juice spilling out over crumbles of feta cheese, and doused with some heady olive oil. As delicious as this sounds to some, others may desire a little something more. I get it–enter the cockle.

Cockles are so simple to make– I have composed salads that are more labor intensive. The smallest type of clam, they offer up a sweet, briny mouthful of the ocean to diners. My favorite way to eat them is to pluck them from the shell using an empty shell as pincers. Set just a bit of roughly chopped garlic to saute in some olive oil in a deep sided dutch oven. The cockles go tumbling in, closed mouth like a child who got into her birthday cake too soon, some freshly squeezed lemon juice (and go ahead chuck in the rinds), a twisting of cracked black pepper– no salt is needed as the cockles retain much of their salty ocean water– and on goes the lid. Wait five minutes, remove the lid, and a puff of sea air rushes upwards to meet your nose. If your cockles aren’t opened yet, give them a few more minutes on the stove.

In keeping with the summer attitude, the cockles can be eaten hot from the stove, or mellowing to a pleasant room temperature. I’ve been making grilled tomato bread to go alongside them. Slices of baguette, grilled to a crisp, rubbed with a garlic clove, and then smeared with a cut Roma tomato. What you are left with is juicy tomato pulp and seed. All that is needed is a drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkling of salt and pepper, and a proper dunking in the broth that is created from the cockles.

Pinch. Dunk. Repeat. That is what I call the perfect directions for a summertime meal.