Soft shelled crab

Soft shelled crab, a photo by anam_uk on Flickr.

Oh I love soft-shelled crab, so when my fishmonger had a pile of them, well I just had to buy a couple.

In the top right they are sat in my sink ready to be rinsed off. Our fishmonger is a nice person & had removed the gills, face & tails. That left me with the all important decision, how to cook them. Now I was tempted to go with tempura, but all that mucking about with icy soda water¹ was  putting me off. So I just dredged them in seasoned flour & chucked them in a hot pan with a bit of chilli & a bit of oil. 2 minutes each side and onto the plate, with a bit of salad, mainly leaves & fennel from the allotment and a very satisfying light lunch² was just there. 

¹OK not strictly necessary, but to get a light batter chilled carbonated water is the easiest thing to use 
²You eat the whole thing, which is pretty rich. I could probably mange 2, but 1 is an ideal light lunch, half makes a fine appetizer  

Scoff a Cephalopod (*)

Well I'm back from my journeying and its time to get things rolling again.

Recently I've been in Australia, mainly Victoria but a couple of side trips out of state. Part of the reason was to go & see the MotoGP at Phillip Island, and that unlikely place is where I'm going to start.

Anyone who has been to a major sporting event will know the disappointment of high price low quality food, and the guilty pleasure it can bring. Phillip Island turned that on its head, yes it was mainly fried and grilled stuff prepared in a van, but the prices weren't the expected gouge. Risking life & limb in the pursuit of taste I found a fish & chip van doing salt & pepper squid. I bravely plunged in. Salt & pepper squid is one of those things, if done right its truly delicious, if not pretty repellent. The first bite proved they knew what they were doing.The squid was al dente and the batter a lovely soft salt & pepper coating. I was pretty surprised, but very pleasantly so.

Later on in town I saw a sign to gladden the heart
"Grilled baby octopus on a stick". I had to have some (and who wouldn't ?). Unfortunately they'd sold out so instead I got a $6(aus) bag of fried octopus.

That's it just there. Quite a substantial portion, for what was meant to be a pre-lunch snack. In fact it tided us over till an earlyish tea. Once again the octopus was well cooked, the seasoned spicy batter adding its own crunch.

Two happy seafood experiences from places I'd not normally expect to be pulling off some of the trickier seafoods quite so well.

(*)Sorry about the title, what can I say, I had a misspent youth.

Bradan Orach

Bradan Orach is a smoke roast salmon.

Whilst tidying the cellar I found some peat chips (probably knocked of some of these, and yes I know). I thought hey these would make some good smoke.

So hot smoked salmon, seemed to be the best way to go. That,s the salmon over there, with delicious peat smoke curling all round it.

Now I'm going to fess up, I bought good quality salmon, because I figured I could always eat it raw in sashimi/sushi fashion. I was worried about over cooking so I don't think I got enough heat in the system before starting up the smoke.

After about 30 minutes the salmon looked pretty good & my temperature probe was giving me a safe reading, unfortunately some dust had got blown around through the vents

It looks worse than it is due to the camera flash. the very top of the salmon is pretty much raw, but smoked, the bottom is reasonably well done (If you've had one-side cooked salmon you'll know it quite well). It tasted pretty good with a lingering peat smoke, but it would have been better if I'd either generated more smoke at a higher temperature or if I'd left it for another hour or so.

I'm going to keep playing with smoking over the summer (I've just gained quite a lot of birch chips) and this is bound to make a re-appearance. Hopefully I'll be able to set up some cold smoking too.

Oysters

 Sometimes seen as the ultimate luxury food (along with caviar & truffles). It's practically the job of a sybarite to like them. Disappointingly I found I couldn't choke a single one down. Until I went to Vegas, where a dozen were order without a moments hesitation by a dear friend. With some trepidation I awaited their arrival.

 What was this, they were delicious, a splash of lemon juice, or a drop (5 in reality) of Tobasco and wow, so this is what the fuss is about, but why are these so different from the ones before ?

 Experiment & reading threw up something unsuspected, Oysters in the us are usually rinsed, where as here in the uk they are just shucked (opened) and swallowed. The problem was the highly saline liquor, which was really causing all the vileness. With simply pouring the liquor away I could scoff oysters to my hearts content.

 Having made that simple discovery, I've been eating oysters at the slightest excuse since.