Category: Gourmet Spearo

Lobster Pad Thai
Hello all, Here’s a recipe for many of my like minded spearo’s – if you find winter is great for crays but tire of eating them, this is a good way to use them well and get a bloody tasty and not totally sacrilegious meal out of Em.

Feeds 3 people – can easily be bulked up to feed 4 or more with some fish, chicken breast or extra veg

Sauce
1.5 Tb tamarind puree
1/4 cup chicken stock
3Tb fish sauce
1Tb soy sauce
Chili powder to taste, I use about 1Tb, there is fresh Chili to be added to thepad Thai later as well
4Tb Brown Sugar

Method
Mix all ingredients together, taste and balance flavors accordingly, when its right it will initially taste sweet and then the hot, salty and sour flavors will come afterwards. Set aside

Pad Thai
Ingredients
2 x crays
1 bag pad Thai rice noodles
Shallots – lots is good, 4 big ones minimum
1/2 an onion cut into pieces
2Tsp minced galangal, or ginger if you don’t have it
4 cloves of garlic minced
2 fresh red chilis (or more if you want an inferno!) Sliced thin, with seeds
1egg
1 big handful of bean sprouts
1 bigger handful of corriander
1/2 cup of finely chopped roasted peanuts
Lime or lemon wedges

Method
1. Grab the tail of the crays and twist out, chop in half and remove meat, devein and into small pieces (5-10mm in size), set aside
2. Boil some water in a jug. Place pad Thai noodles in a saucepan and cover with boiling water. Test noodles after 3 minutes or so, when they are flexible but still have a bit of crunch to them drain then and cover with cold water to prevent further cooking
3. Place a good amount of oil in a wok or large frypan and heat till its very hot. Finely slice the Shallots and fry in hot until until they start to get some color (not a lot) and remove and set aside
4. Add more oil of needed and get wok back to temperature, add the onion and stir fry for 2 minutes or so, until it begins to turn translucent.
5. Add the cray pieces and garlic and ginger cook for around 3 minutes storing as needed until lobster is just cooked through
6. Push everything to one side and crack an egg into the wok on the empty side, chop and stir until scrambled and distribute through the rest of the ingredients (alternatively you can fry the egg in a separate pan, slice it up and put it through)
7. Add the bean sprouts, fresh Chili and drained noodles and combine everything, add about 1/4 of the pad Thai sauce, sour very gently – make sure the wok stays at temperature for this part
8. When the dish is dry add another 1/4 of the sauce and repeat- pad Thai is a dry dish, if you add to much sauce at once it won’t work.
9. Repeat until all sauce has been added, the noodles should be glossy and sticky
10. Serve on a big plate topping with the fried Shallots, peanuts and chopped corriander, give a good size of lime or lemon over the top and you are in for some happy days!

her fish. 

Hot Smoked Fish – Chi Lo

This recipe would be applicable for any nice oily fish: Mullet, Tailor, Kingy, Trev and many more.

In a tub mix:
 1L of water
 1/4 cup of soya sauce
 1/4 cup (brown or caster) sugar
 1/4 cup salt
Add any aromatics you feel like eg. Coriander seeds, pepper, fennel seeds, bay leaves, garlic cloves or chili. Ensure salt and sugar are dissolved.

Take a nice chunk/fillet of skinned fish and trim any bloodline off.

Brine the fish in the fridge for about 4 hours, ensuring it’s submerged.

Remove the fish from the fridge, pat dry with kitchen paper and lay on a cake rack above a plate in the fridge overnight. The purpose of this is to dry the surface of the fillet out. This forms a great protective layer that the smoke can permeate, but also keeps the moisture inside the fillet. When you remove it from the fridge it will have a slightly tacky surface and a nice sheen.

Set up your smoker – I use a foil lined wok with a round cake rack and a lid. I place this on a camp burner on moderate heat.

Use any wood you like (I used mesquite). I recommend using sawdust to ensure a lot of smoke quickly, given the short smoking period.

Smoke for 10 minutes for a thin fillet, 15-20 for a thick chunk (eg. kingy).

The fillet will be a beautiful mahogany colour and should be beautifully juicy inside. It took me some tries to refine the quantities in the brine so it’s not too salty, not too sweet. The drying out process overnight really helped the overall product for me.

Smoked fish can be used in a number of ways and keeps for quite awhile if you have a vac packer. Some ways of use would be smoked fish dip, thai betel leaves, smoked fish sandwiches, smoked fish and eggs, croquettes (as a substitute for spanish salted cod) and even smoked fishcakes.

Blue Swimmer Crab Linguine – Andy Wilson

Ingedients:

• 2 cloves of Garlic
• 1 Medium Chilli chpped minus the seeds
• 3 Tablespoons of Chopped Parsely
• 6 Tablespoons of good Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 350gms Linguine
• 4 Blue Swimmer Crabs boiled for 8-10mins in salt water
• Salt and Pepper

 

1. Cook the crabs and pick all the meat out of them and place in a bowl. I left the meat in the claws but its not essential.
2. Chop the Garlic, Chilli and Parsely
3. When the pasta is almost al dente warm a pan and put 6 tablespoons of olive oil in.
4. Once warm place in the garlic and chilli in and infuse the flavours into the oil.
5. After a minute or so throw in the Parsely and Crab meat plus any juices from the crab meat. Mix the whole lot while warming it. Add salt and pepper to taste.
6. Pasta should be done now. Drain and place in a bowl.
7. Add the crab and mix it through.
8. A generous pour of olive oil on top. Sprinkle some fresh parsely in and squeeze a half lemon over the lot.

 

Enjoy!

Mud crab pasta perfection – Chi Lo

 Sweat 3 anchovies in good quality olive oil
 Add 6 chopped cloves of garlic
 handful of cherry toms and a red chili, salt and pepper to taste
 Add cooked pasta plus flaked crab meat and parsley.

Fish with Creamy Green Peppercorn Sauce – Matt Poulton

 Recipe is very simple
 half a small tub of cream
 half a can of green peppercorns squashed roughly with a fork and add a pinch of salt
 gently heat in pan
 done

Meant to be even better with some butter added. Gently heat in pan. Done

I often make it in the same pan as was used to cook the fish or venison so you get some added flavour.

Thai Fish Cakes – Matt Poulton

 600gms of fish
 1 egg
 2Tbsp red curry paste
 2Tbsp fish sauce
 Small bunch or coriander
 1tsp brown sugar
 3 or 4 kaffir lime leaves sliced finely
 3 spring onions sliced

Combine all ingredients except spring onions in food processor until smooth.

Mix in spring onions.

Form into cakes with wet hands and drop into hot oil.

So easy and so tasty.

 

Sydney sashimi – Alex Taffs

You will need some boned and skinned fillets of bonito (or your choice of fish)
Wrap fish pieces tightly in glad wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours this helps to firm and set the flesh
Remove fish from glad wrap and slice thinly across the grain (I like 2-3mm thick)
Arrange the sliced fish appealing to the eye on your choice of platter
Add a generous blob of wasabi
Add a neat twirl of pickled ginger
A bowl of 75% ketchup manis and 25% soy sauce mixed
Some fresh herbs as garnish
Enjoy with a ice cold beer or white wine on a hot day – Sydney sashimi at its best.

Lime Coconut Fish Curry – Tim Wilson

Hey guys give this a go if you are looking for something different. Works well with most fish

Ingredients
3 limes
1 can coconut cream or milk
1heaped Tb cumin powder and the same of corriander seed
2-3Tb soy sauce
1Tb fish sauce
2Tb brown sugar
3-4 chopped red chilis
Skinned Fillets from a 3kgish fish
Fresh corriander
Optional – 3-5 kaffir lime Leaves Torn up

Combine all ingredients except for lime fresh corriander and fish in a bowl. Add the rind of a line to the mix and then add the fish (chopped into portions)

Marinate for as long as you have 10minutes works 2hours or more is better

Remove the fish bits and cook on a frypan. While this is happening pour the liquid into a saucepan, add the juice of 2 limes to it and heat on high reducing to a thick sauce. Taste and balance flavours as you go.

To serve place fish on a bed of steamed rice and place fish pieces on top. Pour over plenty of the sauce and top with a handful of chopped fresh corriander. Serve with a wedge of lime and enjoy!

 

Chili Basil Lobster – Tim Wilson

Here’s another SE Asian guaranteed winner – it does the lobster justice while breaking up the flavour

Ingredients:

Rice
8+ Cloves of garlic – finely chopped
4-5 Long red chilis – diced
Birds eye chilis/chili flakes/hot chilis
1 onion sliced
Shallots roughly chopped
1 Large carrot – sliced
2-3 celery stalks – sliced
1 Tb Fish Sauce
1 Tb Soy Sauce
1 Tb Oyster Sauce
Small amount of chicken stock
Good handful of thai basil (holy basil or normal basil will suffice if unavailable)
2 cray tails, meat removed and cut to a size of your liking
ANything else you want to stir fry up (highly reccomend bamboo shoots)

Method:
1) Get the rice cooking
2) Put a very generous amount of oil in your wok/pan (coconut oil is really good if you have it)
3) Heat until smoking, stir fry garlic, chili and onion for about 3 minutes or until onions have just started to cook
4) Throw in shallots, celery and carrot (and other veges you want to include) – stir fry for a further minute or two
5) Add the lobster pieces, chicken stock and fish,soy and oyster sauces
6) Stir and fry until sauce has thickened and there is no/minimal liquid in the pan, and lobster is cooked through
7) Remove from the heat and stir through thai basil and hot chili’s
8) Serve on rice
9) Enjoy