We are fairly new at eating and enjoying seafood but we set out on this trip to get right into the guts (excuse the pun) of catching, eating, preparing and hopefully enjoying a much wider variety of seafood. Although our love of fish has been coming along well, we have been hesitant with most things in a shell. But as we travelled through the heart of australia's crayfish industry, the mid west coast, we were hoping to change our perspective of these crustaceans.
As you enter the towns of Cervantes and Jurien Bay and many other towns along the west coast, it seems like everyone is somehow involved in the crayfish industry (actual the western rock lobster, but generally just called crayfish). The crayfishing boats dominate the bays and the somewhat out of place modern houses could only have been funded by the ever prospering crayfish industry.
We were lucky enough to have a friend pop round for dinner with his arms full of his fresh catch from that day, two crayfish. He had caught several more free diving off a boat but based on the fact that we didn't have a big cray pot, he'd brought two of the smaller ones for us to sample. Not only did he bring dinner, but he also cooked it up for us. The result was delicious, we are now crayfish converts. This was his method for cooking up the crays.
Using a large sharp knife cut the crays in half through the their back, from nose to tail. Remove guts and muck and rinse. Place each half, shell side down in a shallow pot of boiling water (about 2 inches). Cook for several minutes until the flesh is almost cooked through. Then cover the open flesh side with a generous amount of butter and crushed garlic. Flip the crays onto a hot plate, BBQ or heavy frying pan with the flesh side down. Cook for a further couple of minutes. Serve one half per person, season with salt and pepper and 'eat him up'.
We didn't take a moment between serving and eating to take a photo, so here's one from the internet that looked pretty damn similar.
Photo: www.indianoceanlobsters.com.au
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