Warm Razor Fish Salad

Razor fish are filter-feeding shells just like oysters and mussels.  They grow in abundance in the colder waters of South Australia.  They are also called poor man’s scallops. The only part of the shell that you eat is the muscle that keeps the two halves of the shell closed.  They have been farmed in the past but I have never seen them for sale anywhere.

Tim and Hugo helped me collect a feed of these shells while walking the boardwalk of Port Lincoln and Peter helped clean them up. We dined like kings tonight. I was surprised by the very sweet flavor of the Razor Fish. We ate this dish outside overlooking the bay with the setting sun. Unforgettable

Ingredients:

75       Razor Fish muscles (or scallops if you can’t get Razor Fish)

50gr    smoked bacon in cubes (home smoked from free range pig)

1          avocado

75 gr   cottage cheese

half     ice berg lettuce

            Pepper and salt to taste

Method:

Cook bacon in frying pan to render fat and brown the bacon.

In mean time cube the avocado, add the cottage cheese and mix well. Slice the lettuce very thinly in strips and add.

Remove bacon cubes from the pan and add the Razor fish to the hot pan. Fry for a minute on both sides. Add to the salad and mix well.

Serve on fresh brown bread.

Banana Cake

The Country Women’s Association is a long established icon in Australia’s farming communities across the continent.  I was given the official CWA cookbook by one of my patients in Collarenebri. A real gift! Although the CWA is nowadays not as big as it once was there is no doubt that they are still very much respected for their ability to bake the perfect cakes, scones, biscuits and what have you.  This recipe from their book is great if you have a few over ripe banana’s or if you find yourself with a surplus bunch of bananas that you really have to get rid of, like we did when we got to the Victoria / South Australia boarder crossing with fruit that we were not allowed to take across.

I doubled the recipe just to get rid of more bananas. There were no complaints.

Ingredients:

2 tbs               Butter (30 gr)

1 cup              Sugar (220gr)

1                      egg beaten

3                      bananas, very ripe, mashed

1 ½ cup          flour (225 gr)

1 tsp               bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp               baking powder

2 tbs               milk

Method:

Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl. Add 1 beaten egg and then add 1 banana at a time beating well. Mix in the flour, bicarb and baking powder.  Add 2 tbs milk.  Poor into a greased cake tin and bake at 180 C for 35-45 minutes.

Icing (optional):

Ingredients:

2 tsp               butter

1 tbs               cocoa powder

1 tbs               Strong coffee

½ tsp              vanilla essence

                        icing sugar

                        Walnuts

Method:

Melt the butter and stir in the cocoa powder, coffee and vanilla essence. Then add enough icing sugar to make a smooth, even spread.  Sprinkle with walnuts

Blue Swimmer Crab pasta

Jaap and Peter spent the whole day trying to catch blue swimmer crabs in the harbour of Tumby Bay. They managed to catch 5 really big ones, which Peter and myself cooked up and made into a beautiful simple pasta dish.

It tasted even better eaten next to the bus overlooking Boston Bay on the Eyre Peninsula. For cooking up crabs or other crustaceans the rule is to cook them in the water they live in (yabbies’ in fresh water and crabs in salt water). We got some sea water to keep it pure.  Drop them in boiling water alive and cook them for about 10 minutes.  Then transfer them into a bowl of very cold (ice) water to stop the cooking process.  After fully chilled pick the crab meat out of the crabs.

Ingredients:

-         1          Pack  of pasta (fettuccini), or even better make some fresh pasta

-         250 gr  crab meat (or less if you can not fish as well as Jaap and Peter)

-         2 tbs    olive oil

-         1          red onion sliced

-         2          garlic cloves crushed

-         ½ tsp   chilly powder

-         1-2 tbs Coriander leaves (dried ones if you travel by bus)

-         400 gr  ricotta

-         50 ml   cream

-         300 gr  cherry tomatoes (quartered)

-                   Salt and pepper to taste

-                   grated cheese to taste

Method:

Boil the pasta.

Glaze the onion with garlic in olive oil and add salt, chilly powder and dry coriander (add coriander at end if using fresh leaves). Add Ricotta and cream and heat well but don’t boil.  When pasta is done add the crab meat to the ricotta mixture and mix, then mix in the cherry tomatoes before adding to the pasta. Mix in well and serve with salt and pepper to taste as well as some extra fresh coriander if you have it and grated cheese on top.

Salt and pepper squid with garlic sauce

Every one loves salt and pepper squid. After catching 6 big ones the other day at Tumby Bay we had to cook some up. You can use all parts of the squid but traditionally it is the tube +/- the tentacles.  The wings are also nice particularly after scoring them with a sharp knife.  If you like your squid nice and soft rather then rubbery the trick is not to cook them too long. Also soaking in milk for up to 8 hours helps as well as freezing the squid first.

Ingredients:

-  400 gr         Squid (any part that you like)

-   ½ cup         Plain flower

-   ½ cup         Corn flower

-   1 tbs           Salt (+ more to sprinkle to taste)

-   1 tbs           Pepper (black or white)

-                       Oil for frying (sun flower)

Sauce:

-   3 tbs           mayonnaise 

-   3 tbs           yoghurt

-    ½ tbs         honey (or golden syrup or treacle)

-   1 clove        garlic

Methode:

Cut squid tubes in rings or in flat pieces which you then score in a criss cross pattern.  Divide the tentacles in devourable pieces.  Soak in milk if desired and  if time allows.  Pad them dry before deep-frying. Mix the flowers with the salt and pepper. Put the flower mix into a plastic bag and add the squid to the bag. Shake until all the squid is covered with flower.

Fry in small batches in oil (180 C) for 1-2 minutes. Sprinkle with salt to taste and eat hot.

For the sauce mix equal parts mayonnaise with yoghurt. Add something sweat and garlic to taste. The sauce keeps well in the fridge and becomes stronger in flavour over time.