All posts tagged: fish

All-In-One Seafood Stew

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I was recently given the opportunity to test drive a recipe from a new cook book. Adie McClelland’s first Black Dog Cottage Cookbook was published in 2009 and her second book, sensibly titled The Second Black Dog Cottage Cookbook was released in August. She’s a well travelled foodie and it shows through her recipes. Her style of cooking is much like mine – unfussy and easy but with a Mediterranean angle. I think she would forgive me my casual cooking style. The Second Black Dog Cottage Cook Book has just been released throughout New Zealand. For more information please visit Phantom House Books http://www.phantomhouse.com or their Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/BlackDogCottageCookbook. I wanted to make the All-In-One Seafood Stew because it’s what I would order if I were dining out. This recipe requires 10 tomatoes, which for a long time were unbelievably expensive and probably not very good. They’re starting to come down in price now so it was time to tackle this stew. After a quick scan of the recipe, I identified just one unknown ingredient: passata. Passata …

Make A Chowder (Salmon Head and Mussel Chowder)

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Salmon. I love it raw. I love it cooked. I love it smoked. I love it poached. I love it pan fried. I love it baked. I love it steamed. It is creamy, fishy and super rich. Everything I’ve read says that salmon makes too strong a stock. I’m not afraid of a strong fish stock, but if a strong stock makes you queasy, this recipe is not for you. I’ve wanted to make a chowder for the longest time and a quiet, Autumn weekend at home last month was a good time for it. You can easily spend too much on seafood for a chowder. Sure, it will be delicious, but what about making a delicious chowder using cheaper ingredients? I picked up 2 salmon heads for cheap at my local asian market. Fish heads are usually cheap and I’ve been eyeing these up for a while now, wondering what to do with them. To prepare, make sure the gills are removed – they usually are. Cut the fins off with a pair of …

Auckland Seafood Festival – coming up next

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I’ve been gorging myself on seafood lately. Prawns, salmon, white fish, sea cucumber, squid, more salmon, more prawns, more salmon…That’s just the last few days. I do love seafood and it generally seems to be the more politically correct “meat” to eat. It’s a long weekend here in Auckland as we celebrate Auckland Anniversary weekend. The Auckland Seafood Festival is on all weekend so if you are a seafood lover, it’s worth checking out. This will be my first time at the event so stay tuned for my report back this weekend. My sister Joey and I will be going on Saturday armed with appetites, cameras and general silliness. Tickets are $20 each and more more info can be found over at the event website: www.aucklandseafoodfestival.co.nz Things I have my eye on at the Auckland Seafood Festival: Scampi – If you like prawn, you really should try it’s hulking cousin. The meat is sweet and firm. Wild Seafood – If you’re into eating non-farmed food and are feeling a little adventurous, there is a Wildfood Seafood passport …

Prepare Ika Mata (Cook Islands raw fish salad)

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Raw fish is delish I fell in love with Ika Mata during our honeymoon in Rarotonga a couple of years ago. This raw fish and coconut cream salad is “cooked” in lemon juice and confettied with diced vegetables. I’ve eaten it a couple times in New Zealand, but never had the guts to make it at home until now. It’s absolutely a summertime dish and I’m glad to be able to cross it off this summer’s to do list. It was much easier than I anticipated. I don’t know what I haven’t made it sooner. Some raw fish dishes from around the world (alpha): Crudo, Italy Ceviche, South America Ika Mata, Cook Islands Kelaguen, Mariana Islands (Micronesia) Kinilaw, Philippines Kokoda, Fiji Ota ‘ika or Oka i’a, Tonga, Tahiti, Samoa Poisson Cru or E’ia Ota, Tahiti Poke, Hawaii Tiradito, Peru This recipe uses yellowfin tuna because it happens to be on special this week at Nosh, but you can use firm white fish such as kahawai or gurnard if the price is right. This is good eating, but can feel on the light side. If you are like …

Buttery Golden Pan-Fried Flounder

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When I was a little girl, a single steamed flounder, a plate of vegetables and plenty of rice would feed our family. My parents would allocate me and my sister a flounder roe each. Since flounder come with two roes by default, it was lucky they stopped at two kids. The roe was a treat!  The roe itself isn’t a thing of beauty, but I loved biting into it and imagining I was eating thousands of tiny fish at once. If you’re wondering what flounder roe tastes like, I find it mild and slightly creamy with a only hint of fishiness. The fish eggs are tiny – much smaller than other fish roe. Salmon is my number one fish, but if I must pick a white fish, it’s got to be flounder. I adore flounder but I usually steam or baked it. Flounder has a sweet flavour and a delicate texture. When cooked, it flakes with a little pressure and the large bones make it easy to eat whole. As a kid, my parents never shied away …

Snapper are my first world problem

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Someone wise once told me, if everyone in the world put their problems into a hat, you would be glad to pull out your own. It’s true. I was pining for flounder, but at the Chinese market, flounder are held in high regard and the price reflects this. Snapper is cheap at the Chinese supermarket. At the regular supermarket, the pricing is the other way around. Snapper is expensive whereas flounder is cheap. Isn’t it funny? I had to settle for snapper. A little bit of coconut cream, chopped garlic, spring onion, green curry paste and plenty of salt and pepper. Wrapped these fish in paper and baked for 30 minutes. It wasn’t so bad. Tip: Buy flounder at the regular supermarket and snapper at the Chinese supermarket.

Bangkok: Eating fish, eaten by fish and 20kg of shopping

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Our epic South East Asia adventure came to an end with 2 nights in Bangkok before flying home to New Zealand. Bangkok is a great place to end a holiday as you can load up to the gills with shopping before hopping on a plane. We did the typical tourist sights in Bangkok on a previous stopover so we didn’t want to do any more. I estimate we gained 20kg in shopping in 2 days. Last time we were in Bangkok, our 2 day stopover resulted in 13kg of shopping. If you measure by weight, we are definitely getting better at shopping. Our 2 days of epic shopping in Bangkok put us up to 39.9kg. We were allowed up to 40kg in checked luggage so pretty close! Eating fish This steamed fish dish was barely cooked and would have tasted amazing if only it didn’t have about 10 times more chili than I could handle. I scraped off all the chili, ate it with all of the teddy bear shaped rice and still needed lots …

How to deal with 60+ types of New Zealand seafood

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The Greatest Meal On Earth website has a handy table on New Zealand fish. All the basics about 60+ local seafoods including characteristics of the meat and how to cook each kind. If you come across an unfamiliar fish at the fish markets you can count on this table to tell you what to do with it. I especially like how you can sort by each of the categories. For example, you can choose to view all local seafoods that are eaten raw. There are 16 of them and of those, there is only 1 seafood that is not cooked at all. That would be kina. A Ruby is not a jewel. The other day at the fish shop, I spied some pretty looking Ruby fillets. I’ve never cooked Ruby before and I didn’t know what to do with it. Lucky for me the table recommends: Poach, Smoke, Steam, Bake, BBQ, Casserole, Fry. Which pretty much means I can do whatever the hell I want with it except eat it raw. So I pan fried …

Fresh Food Markets in Luang Prabang, Laos

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Even if you don’t buy anything, it’s worth a visit to the fresh food markets in Luang Prabang. There are no supermarkets here and locals buy fresh food daily from the markets. Markets in Auckland are a weekend activity and even then, only a small percentage of the population actually do their shopping at markets. I love seeing all the ingredients in their uncooked state. Ingredients look so fresh and lovely in daylight. When was the last time you bough vegetables that hadn’t seen fluorescent lights? The tourists here are just touristing, people don’t tend to cook while on holiday. We eat out a lot instead. There were plenty of familiar things at the market and also lots of unfamiliar  stuff to concern yourself with. If you don’t like it, that’s fine, but where do you think the local restaurants get their fresh meat and produce from? Street Food There are plenty of snacks to be found at every corner. Fresh Meat This uncovered, tepid meat might horrify the NZ Food Safety Authority, but think about …

Baked fish and chips with coleslaw

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Happy Easter everyone! Hope you all have some feasting and chocolate eating this long weekend. We have both Mondays and Friday off for Easter. Is that the same the world over? I thought it fitting to write about fish today since Good Friday is traditionally a day when you abstain from meat, but apparently, fish is fair game. Personally, I don’t morally differentiate between eating fish and meat, but hey, I didn’t make the rules. If you don’t eat meat on Good Friday, you don’t eat meat on Good Friday. We don’t eat fish and chips very often. It’s not one of our regular takeaway choices – it’s a summer treat reserved for afternoons spent at the beach. Fish and chip shops here can be a bit hit and miss. Fresh fish comes at a price. The fish and chip shops by us are either too greasy or too expensive so it’s easier just to go without. Our too greasy local was to be just around the corner from our Sandringham flat and their “number …

Eating laap in Laos

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Laap, also spelled larb, larp or laab, was my absolute favourite dish during our epic South East Asia adventure. Laap is made with ground meat, ground sticky rice, fish sauce, lime juice, fresh chili and lots of herbs like mint, coriander and spring onion. The locals eat it with their hands and with sticky rice and raw vegetables. I totally fell in love with this fresh, zingy, savoury dish. Crossing into Laos On a cold mid January morning, we get up early, have a buffet breakfast at our hotel in Vinh, Vietnam and get on a 6am private bus to Laos. It is cold, grey and misty. We take Ho Chi Minh Trail which is a windy path through the mountains and you can see how it could have been used in war against a foreign enemy. The mist is so thick in places you can’t see across to the other side of the valley. Looking out into the heavy mist it’s easy to think that the mountains are on the edge of the world. …

Eating Borneo #8 – New Years at Mañana

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New Year celebrations have always been epic for us. Many businesses are closed during this time in New Zealand so we holiday like there’s no tomorrow. It’s a time when we leave the city and flock to beaches all over the country to get absolutely trashed with their friends. There’s good food and good times to be had and the celebrations often last a week. I saw in last New Years with The Koala, my friend A, my sister Joey, her boyfriend D and the guests and staff at Mañana Borneo. Mañana is a small resort on a private beach about an hour north of Kota Kinabalu in the Sabah north of Borneo Island. It’s not on a separate island but this beach is only accessable by boat. No cars. No shops. No power during the day. Just a private, sheltered beach, snorkeling, swimming, books, hammocks, monsoon every afternoon (mandatory downtime). It was heaven. We stayed in 3 private villas with our own outdoor bathrooms. The menu here was limited but that was fine, it meant …

Friday Favourites: Fish Burger

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An amazing meal isn’t just about the food. What you did that day, the company you keep, surroundings and other stuff can all affect your enjoyment of a meal. After a lovely day at the Muriwai last summer, I got to eat this beast for a late lunch. A big piece of deep fried fish, plenty of salad bits and tons of mayo/tartar. It was at the fish and chip shop attached to the store on the way out of Muriwai. I don’t know the name of it, but I’m sure you’ll find it. It still looks good half way through. What’s a kiwi day at the beach without some fish and chips?

The Last Fish Supper

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I just read an article by Anna Hart called The Last Fish Supper. If you eat seafood in New Zealand, you should probably read it. You can read it here. Here are some insightful parts: …Some of the hoki caught off the coast of New Zealand is sent to China to be processed, before being imported back into the country… In New Zealand, Hoki is really popular as a cheap, everyday fish. It’s nuts to think that we’re sacrificing freshness for cheap labour. What can we do about this? I’ve heard of produce that are sent elsewhere to be processed and packaged and then distributed nation or world wide. This includes being sent back to the area it was grown/harvested at in the first place. What’s the point in buying locally when there’s a huge carbon footprint? …most restaurants in Waiheke have to source their fish from Auckland, as only one local fisherman has a quota entitling him to sell fish from an island renowned for abundant snapper, kingfish and trevally… This is ridiculous. Why aren’t …

Moki Moki Moki!

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So you might already know that my favourite fish is salmon. I adore white fish too, but white fish is white fish to me. Whether it’s $40 snapper, or $25 Tarakihi, or $10 Moki. I don’t have a preference, I’ll eat them all. Maybe this horrifies you. Maybe it doesn’t. What it does mean though, is that I will never pay $40 for snapper when a $10 Moki will do the job swimmingly. Herb Encrusted Moki burgers Serves 2 hungry punters for a big lunch or normal dinner Ingredients 1 fillet firm white fish. About 10cm x 20cm size. About 400-500 grams (up to 1 pound) Half a cup breadcrumbs 2 tablespoons dried herbs 1/2 teaspoon salt Generous grind of black pepper Knob of butter, melted A handful of salad greens 2 slices of tomato Fresh buns Mayonnaise Preparation On a plate, mix breadcrumbs, herbs, salt and pepper. Cut the fillet into 2 square pieces. Brush melted butter onto fish and push onto breadcrumb mixture so that all sides are thickly coated. Heat a non-stick …

Green Goddess

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Inspired by a green goddess salad. I didn’t have anchovies, but I did have a couple of fillets of lemon pepper crumbed fish. A perfect light meal for a warm spring Sunday lunch. Our lemon tree is giving us plenty of fruit at the moment. With the amount of fish we eat, it’s been wonderful!

Almost Fish and Chips

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Lemon pepper fish with potatoes dauphinoise, salad with lemon ginger dressing. Lemon pepper fish came out of a box. Potatoes Dauphinoise Ingredients 3 potatoes 3 cloves of garlic 1 teaspoon dried herbs (optional) Half a cup of cream Plenty of salt and pepper 1 tablespoon oil Preparation Preheat oven to 175°C. Peel potatoes and slice into 2mm thick rounds. Peel and finely chop garlic. Coat the bottom of an oven proof dish with oil. Arrange 1 layer of sliced potato on the bottom of the dish. Drizzle with a cream and season with salt, pepper and a pinch of dried herbs. Repeat last 2 steps finishing with a layer of potato. Bake at 180°C for 45 minutes. Divide into desired portions and serve. Lemon Ginger Dressing Ingredients Juice of 1 lemon 1/4 cup oil 1 teaspoon mustard powder 1 teaspoon minced ginger Pinch of Salt Ground Pepper 1 teaspoon sugar Preparation Whisk all ingredients together. Can be refrigerated, just give the dressing a whisk/shake before serving.

Seafood roundup

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I would love to live in a tiny fishing village for a while and buy fresh seafood from the fishermen as they come in from sea. Here is a collection of seafood plates I’ve whipped so far this year: What do you do when you haven’t been shopping in a while and only have cheese, potatoes, peas…and then find half a bag of prawns in the freezer? You make cheesy potato gratin with pea puree and sweet chili prawn skewers of course! Mussels in coconut cream and sweet chili sauce. Feeds 2 hungry adults for less than $5! Add a $10 bottle of red and you’ve got yourself a date 🙂 One day I’ll figure a way to avoid photographing the steam coming off hot food…without having to wait for dinner to grow cold. Creamy prawns with rice and green salad and beetroot. Easy and decadent. Saute half a diced onion and a couple of cloves of chopped garlic in some butter. When those are cooked, add enough prawns for 2 and cook until just done. …

Friday Favourites 1: Salt Pepper Hapuka

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Welcome to Friday Favourites! Every Friday I will post 1 favourite dish from 1 favourite restaurant. Salt Pepper Hapuka at Canton Cafe I dream about this dish all the time. Firm, bite sized chunks of  hapuka with a little chili and dice onion. This crunchy, boneless, deep fried number is never greasy. I can’t count the number times I’ve ordered this over the years but it’s always a winner. Nici Wickes (World Kitchen) from The New Zealand Herald put Canton Cafe down as number 17 in her 50 dishes to die for article last year. 17. The Canton Cafe in Kingsland has heaps of great dishes but we reckon the standout is chilli ginger prawns, closely followed by their salt, pepper and chilli hapuka. Canton Cafe is BYO with no corkage fee and is cramped, busy and noisy. Don’t come here for a romantic dinner. Do come here for cheap, fast, delicious food. Make sure you book ahead and allow some time to find that elusive Kingsland parking. All you can eat rice and tea to wash …

Flounder baked in foil

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This plate of food cost about $4 in groceries. Thanks to all this talk of flounder (you know who you are) I’ve been craving flounder hard out. I’ve never cooked whole fish in my life, only fillets so I decided that flounder was a good place to start. I had to serve these in the foil because our plates were too small for the fish without the foil. What does it mean when you need bigger plates? Baked Flounder Ingredients 1 Flounder per person (gutted and scaled*) 1 clove of garlic A smear of chilli sauce or half a red chilli Splash of soy sauce 1 tablespoon of oil Salt Black Pepper 2 Kaffir lime leaves Ginger – cut into 5 matchstick size pieces A lime  Preparation Preheat oven to 200°C. Wash the flounder and slice a large X on both sides of the fish with a sharp knife. Tear off a piece of foil large enough to fit the fish on and to wrap up. Lay this on a large shallow roasting dish. Lay …