Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

One day in the Ikea’s Swedish food section, I discovered that every August, the Swedes celebrate their crayfish season by having crayfish parties where you basically gather around, eat a whole load of boiled crayfish and drink a tonne of booze. The Swedish sure know how to party!

Ikea was* selling boxes of frozen crayfish prepared Swedish style. That is, boiled in ridiculous amount of salted water and flavoured with dill. Who am I to resist such weird and wonderful frozen food from Ikea? The box contained a tray of crayfish frozen in what seemed to be dirty, muddy water but that didn’t put me off.

What can I say? It’s crayfish. It’s salty. It’s weird. It’s wonderful. And you have to suck its head out. What more could you ask for? The interesting factor is there. The taste isn’t so bad albeit on the salty side. It’s like eating yabbies. Lots of them.

Since I am totally in love with Annabel Langbein’s the Free Range Cook series on ABC iView. I thought I might use up a box of crayfish to make this Crayfish Caesar Salad. The only disappointing thing is once you peel down a box of crayfish ($20) – you only get a bowlful of crayfish meat or so. I guess eating a pile of them together makes them seem to last longer!

This salad is absolutely gorgeous and I will be making it again and again. Below is what I have adapted from Annabel’s recipe.

Salad for 2-3 (as a light meal):

1. 1 head of cos lettuce, washed and torn into bite-sized pieces
2. 1.5 kg cooked unshelled crayfish, peeled
3. Optional poached egg per person (I had this and it was great)

Garlic Croutons:

1. 1 French stick (I used generic multi-grain French stick from Coles, it was fine)
2. 1 clove garlic, lightly crushed
3. a light drizzling of extra virgin olive oil

Cut the French stick into about 1.5cm slices crosswise. Drizzle one side of each slice very lightly with olive oil using your finger to spread the oil around (sure you can use a pastry brush but then you’ll have to wash it).  Rub the crushed clove of garlic on each slice but don’t leave any garlic pieces on.

Bake in the 180′c oven (if you have fan-forced oven, turn it on) for about 20-30 minutes. Test by breaking a piece in half. It should be brittle enough to break easily and look even browned.

Creamy Seafood Dressing:

1. 1 tsp olive oil or butter
2. 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3. 5 tinned, salted anchovies in oil, drained
4. 3 heap dessertspoons of double cream (or 1/2 cup of normal cream)
5. 3 tbsp grated parmesan

Add about a teaspoon of olive oil or butter to a non-stick frying pan and fry the garlic on low heat for a minute or so. Don’t let it colour. Add anchovies to cook for about a minute until they melt. Use a wooden spoon to mash them together and add cream. Bring the sauce to boil and simmer for 2-3 minutes until the cream has reduced by half. Add grated parmesan.

Putting it all together:

Dress the salad leaves with 4-5 tbsp of the dressing until nicely coated. Taste and add more if needed. Add crayfish and croutons. Top with a poached egg if you’re having it. Annabel didn’t specify poached eggs but I had it to make the meal slightly more substantial and it was great.

* I was last at Ikea a couple of weeks ago, and they were still selling them. I guess Australians didn’t find them interesting enough.

This time last year I made: Spaghetti with Asparagus, Broccoli, Lemon and Shallot

(Porridge with poached pear $8)

I am not a morning person. Oh, no. To be at work at 8.30am (yes, bummer), I literally hop out of bed at about 7.30 before rushing through everything to get to work on time. When you see a very heavily-pregnant chick running for a tram on Collins St. heading west-end, give way to her please, otherwise she will bitch about you on Twitter. And for god’s sake, if you’re sitting in the special seat and there’s nothing wrong with you, give her the damn seat.

So it follows to say that I rarely eat breakfast out. Also the fact that every time I eat breakfast out, I feel ‘why did I just pay $15 for something I can just wait in bed for Josh to make at home?’

(Big Breakfast – $16?)

So when Maya said, ‘dude, let’s do breakfast some time.’ I grudgingly obliged. But my second worst mistake of all was to let her pick. We got there at about 7:45am. Empty except for one person who was sipping her latte and reading newspaper.

Empty. And still the menu took a while to even appear. As Maya ran late, we didn’t really get to order until about 8.00am. Maya decided on porridge and coffee. I, on the Big Breakfast and Josh on the Mediterranean omelet.

Our food took a while to arrive. When I say a while, I’m talking about a good 20-minute wait for the dishes to stagger their arrival. We were basically so short for time that we had to just gobble up everything and go due all of us being quite late for work. In fact, we even have time to come with a lame comment about how the service is hardly ‘brisq.’

(Spanish omelet with chorizo and red pepper – $14?)

My Big Breakfast was consisted of plenty of fried mushrooms (decent), scrambled eggs (overcooked), spinach (slightly oily), roasted tomato halves (decent), potato rosti (oily), bacon (average), avocado and toast (horrid). It was plentiful and I suppose decent enough. But nothing to write home about.

Josh’s chorizo and capsicum omelet was… welll… he said it was okay. He was so late for work that he didn’t say much and I didn’t have time to steal any because he gobbled it down that fast. At least my work is only 300 metres away. He had no such luck.

Can’t say I was too thoroughly impressed with the food or the service. But then again, I rarely get impressed by breakfast. It was a while before I ate breakfast out since. I certainly never let Maya pick a breakfast spot again.

Brisq [ Website ]
Address: 396 Little Collins St., Melbourne VIC 3000 [ Google Map]
Phone: 03 9642 3633

This time last year I ate at: Café No 5, Centre Place, City

This is one of those dishes that we always go back to when it’s a week night and we’re starving. The prawns are always in the freezer, the rice can be made in 20 minutes (while we watch something on ABC iView – yes that’s right, still no TV) and any random Asian greens are generally always on hand in the fridge (bless lack of meal planning and just buying random things approach to food shopping!)

Allow me to introduce you to this wonderful thing called Chinese olives paste. I have no idea, frankly, what a Chinese olive looks like as I only buy the Chinese olive and pickled mustard paste in jars but Googling returns a result that includes a Thai dish. Which I never had. I feel like a failure!

Anyway! Try this out. Sooo good and simple.

Fried rice for two:

1. 2 cups of cooked rice
2. 8 medium-sized raw prawns (we just have a bag of frozen for this sort of ‘emergency’)
3. a handful of green beans (or broccoli or zucchini, anything really), chopped
4. 1 bunch of any mixture of random Chinese greens like boy choy, choy sum, pak choy or kai lan, chopped
5. 1 egg
6. 3 dessertspoonfuls of Chinese olive and pickled mustard paste*
7. 3 cloves of garlic, chopped

Heat up a frying non-stick pan and add the Chinese olive and pickled mustard paste. This paste is covered in a fair bit of oil so you don’t need any extra oil. Once it’s hot (it will spit a bit), add prawns and garlic. Fry until the prawns start to turn pink. Add beans or non-leafy vegetables you’re using. Add rice and fry until the rice is too hot to touch (yes stick your finger in there, don’t be shy).

Add the greens and cook until wilt. Push the rice aside and crack an egg in the middle. Scramble the egg a bit and pile the hot rice back on top. Leave the egg to cook for half a minute before tossing everything together (if you toss the egg while it’s still raw, the rice will be soggy).

Give it a taste but generally the Chinese olive paste is rather salty. If not, add a dash of soy sauce.

* I haven’t got a picture but you can this at your local Asian grocer – it’s glass jar with red plastic. Something bridge or other brand. Next time I have a jar, I’ll get a picture of it. It doesn’t look very appetising but it is awesome.

This time last year I made: Nicoise Salad with Seared Tuna (My Way)

(Michele‘s Eat Me cupcakes)

I am off sick and incredibly grumpy today from having a very painful gout attack overnight (a condition relatively rare in my demographic, I know. So lucky me… I guess) and since I can’t really take any medication for it, I have decided on a more natural approach: focus on the lovelier things in life such as the Melbourne Food Bloggers’ Mad Hatter Spring Picnic that took place on Saturday. The power of the mind and all that.

(Emma‘s uber awesome teapot cake and chocolate truffles)

It was a lovely, sunny Saturday at Studley Park in Kew and a few of the Melbourne food bloggers gathered together with a few dishes to celebrate the brilliant, sunny atmosphere. There were lots of cupcakes, my, there were lots of cupcakes and a few lovely dishes on offer. Unfortunately, I was a bit out of it on the day (as I often am these days) so I sincerely regret not having the chance to get to talk to more people and taking enough photos! But let’s concentrate on the positives now, seriously, edible teapot! How cool is that!?!

(April‘s fig conserve cupcakes)

April, with her usual graceful, fabulous self, breezed in with her famous cupcakes. This time a fig cupcake in blue motif. A definite win. There were some prizes given out thanks to a few sponsors and she won the blue prize!

(Josh’s scones, served with homemade mandarin jam and lemon butter)

Josh made some scones that morning, they arrived lovely and still warm. They were awesome eaten with the homemade lemon butter and mandarin jam (that I bought from the maternity hospital’s fund raising sale – I tell you these old ladies do awesome homemade jams and preserves. Bless these hospital volunteers). Don’t you love my mother-in-law’s old biscuit tin? So retro. She’s not getting it back. Read the rest of this entry »