Summer Feast - Summer Seafood Recipes

Warm evenings bring out many recreational fishers to try their hand at catching prawns and crabs in estuaries and tailor off the beaches.

If you are buying seafood, freshness is essential; avoid any discolouration of joints in crabs or black spots near the heads of prawns and choose fish with clear eyes, red gills and firm flesh. If in doubt, trust your nose and reject anything stronger than a clean sea-smell.

Preparation of prawns will depend on your recipe - they can be peeled green (raw), cooked in the shell of have the tailfan left on for barbecuing. A good catch of river prawns can be simply dropped in boiling salted water for 3-5 minutes (add a bit of honey for a sweeter taste) and remember overcooking is a sin.

Tropical Prawn Curry

(serves 4-6)

Director of the WA Marine Research Laboratories, Dr Jim Penn, has a quietly famous recipe…

3 cups whole milk
2 cups dessicated coconut
125g butter
5 small chopped onions
2 cloves minced garlic
1/8 tsp each ground cumin & cayenne pepper
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tbsp curry powder
2 tsp salt
small can tomatoes
2 tbsp flour
1 medium cucumber, peeled and cubed
4 cups raw peeled prawns (king are best, but any type will do)
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp plum jam

Method

Bring milk and coconut to boil, cool 30 minutes, strain and discard pulp. Saute onions and garlic with butter in a large pan until transparent, blend in cumin, ginger, pepper, curry, salt and chopped tomatoes. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and add flour gradually, stir in milk slowly and heat until just below boiling. Add cucumber and prawns and simmer 10 minutes, stirring thoroughly. Combine lemon juice and plum jam, add and simmer for another 5 minutes. Serve with hot steamed rice.

Chilli Crabs

(serves 4)

Mud Crabs should be alive until the last minute, as they go off quickly, but swimmer crabs last longer. Keep live crabs in wet hessian bag as there's more oxygen available than in a bucket of water. Never put a live crab into boiling water as this toughens the meat and claws may fall off. Drown or chill crabs first, then place in cold water, bring to the boil and simmer for about 8 minutes per 500g. Or serve this classic dish of chilli crabs with crusty bread and salad.

4 crabs, cooked, cleaned and halved
3 cloves garlic
1 tsp fresh grated ginger
4 chopped spring onions
1 cup white wine
small can tomatoes
1 red chilli, seeded and finely sliced
olive oil

Method

Brush a large pan or wok with oil, saute garlic, ginger and spring onions. Add chopped tomatoes, wine and chilli and simmer for 1-15 minutes. Add crabs, toss in mixture, simmer 3-4 minutes and serve immediately.

Tailor Kokoda

(serves 4)

Tailor have a distinctive flavour and are a slightly oily fish which suit Mediterranean flavours such as tomato, onion, garlic, lemon and fresh herbs (fennel, rosemary, oregano, majoram). Whole fish can be stuffed with these, then baked in foil, or brushed with olive oil and barbecued. Tailor doesn't suit freezing or poaching, but fillets are delicious coated in egg and breadcrumbs and fried quickly. Or butterfly the fish, place skin-down on foil, rub with herb butter and grill without turning. Adventurous eaters can try this great Fijian dish, which suits tailor or sea-mullet, in which the fish is ‘cooked' by a marinade rather than heat.

750g chopped oily fish fillets (such as tailor, herring or mullet)
1 tsp salt
¼ cup white vinegar
½ cup lemon juice
1 medium chopped green (or yellow) capsicum
150g can coconut cream
handful of halved cherry tomatoes
2 tbsp chopped fresh chives
1 small fresh red chilli, finely chopped
1 tsp sugar

Method

Combine salt, vinegar and juice in bowl, add fish, marinate in fridge for at least 3 hours. Rinse fish until water runs clear, then mix in bowl with other ingredients. Chill before serving.