Crab Cakes Recipes

Ingredients

500 g fresh or frozen crab meat

2 tablespoons olive oil

½ small onion, chopped

2 large eggs

1½ teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

1 teaspoon salt flakes

1 teaspoon hot paprika

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 spring onion, sliced

2 slices firm white sandwich bread, crusts removed, torn into small pieces

1 cup fresh bread crumbs

60 g butter

Method:

1. Pick over the crab meat to remove any bits of shell and cartilage, being careful not to break up the lumps of crab.

2. heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a pan over medium heat and cook the onion without colouring for 5 minutes. remove the pan from the heat and cool.

3. Whisk together the eggs, Worcestershire sauce, salt, paprika, pepper and cooled onion.

4. Gently mix in the crab meat, spring onion and torn bread. at this stage the mixture will be quite wet.

5. Press the mixture into 6 even-sized crab cakes, each one 2 cm thick. line a tray or dinner plate with plastic wrap and sprinkle with half of the bread crumbs. set the crab cakes in one layer on the top of the crumbs and sprinkle with the remaining bread crumbs. cover the crab cakes loosely with more plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour. This is important to help set and hold the crab cakes together when cooking.

6. Melt the butter and the remaining olive oil in a large nonstick pan over medium–high heat until the butter begins to foam. Cook the crab cakes until golden brown, about 3 minutes on each side.

HINTS AND TIPS:

* You will need—cutting board, cook’s knife, bowl, cup, spoon and weight measures, wooden spoon and sauté pan.

* Crab cakes are an American favourite. They can be as simple as fresh crab meat, bread crumbs, eggs and seasoning to something a bit more complex. They can be grilled, baked, pan-fried or deep-fried.

* Make the crab cakes smaller and serve as an appetiser or finger food at your next party. Make them well ahead of time and panfry once the guests arrive.

* Serve crab cakes with aïoli or tartare sauce as well as a simple green salad.

* To reduce the fat content, spray the crab cakes with oil and pan-fry instead of cooking in butter and oil as mentioned.

* Crab meat is readily available at most fish shops. Always pick over the crab meat as often it has bits of shell in it.

* The best option is to cook and pick over the crab yourself to guarantee freshness.

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Fish pie Recipes

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil

800 g sliced onions

400 ml fish stock

200 ml cream

Salt and pepper

800 g white fish fillets

1 tablespoon truffle oil (optional)

2 spring onions, sliced

1 packet frozen puff pastry, defrosted

2 egg yolks, lightly beaten, for glazing

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 200°C.

2. For the sauce—Heat the oil in a pan over low heat and add the sliced onions. Cover and sweat gently until very soft and translucent, even a little bit of colour is fine. add the fish stock and reduce by half. add the cream and reduce by half or until a thick consistency is reached. Remove from the heat and puree.

3. In the bottom of each pie dish, place some of the sauce and about 200 g fish, some of the spring onions then another layer of the sauce. Repeat in each dish.

4. Cover the dish with the puff pastry, brush with egg yolk, set in the fridge for 1 minute and re-coat with egg yolk.

5. Bake for 25–30 minutes on the middle shelf of the oven until the pastry is golden and puffed.

HINTS AND TIPS:

* You will need—cutting board, cook’s knife, weight, spoon and liquid measures, saucepan, 4 x 12-cm diameter, 5-cm deep pie dishes and pastry brush.

* This is a beautiful pie recipe and is in stark contrast to the easy-to-make tuna bake.

* To make this really special, use the quick puff pastry—although more effort is required, the results are well worth it.

* If you are concerned about bones when buying fish for this dish, request pieces of fish from the tail end as a guarantee of no bones. Or you could ask your supplier to take the bones out and dice the fish for you—at a possible extra charge.

* Instead of the puff pastry lid, try topping the pie with mashed or crushed potato. Cut some butter into small dice and sprinkle over the mash topping before baking—same temperature and time. Or you could sprinkle grated cheese over the mash topping.

* From fish pie to seafood pie—use the combination of seafood mentioned in the recipe for seafood crepes.

* Any number of vegetables can be added to this pie, the most common being peas. Adding vegetables is not necessary and if serving with a good salad, there is no need to worry about a lack of greens with this dish.

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Fish Fillets, pan-Fried Recipes

Ingredients

4 x 200g white fish fillets, skin left on

1 tablespoon olive oil

Salt

Method:

1. use a sharp knife and lightly score the skin on each fish fillet at 1-cm intervals.

2. rub fish with olive oil and season with salt.

3. Place the fish fillets, skin side down, in a medium–hot nonstick pan and cook without moving for 3 minutes. see hints and tips for cooking times especially if the fish is quite thick.

4. When the skin is crisp and lightly browned, turn fillets over, reduce heat to low and cook for a further 3–4 minutes. (The fish is cooked when any juices run clear; if the juices are cloudy, it is still slightly undercooked; and if the juices solidify and turn hard white, the fish is overcooked.)

HINTS AND TIPS:

* You will need—cutting board, cook’s knife, spoon measure, sauté pan and spatula.

* The time taken to cook fish depends on the thickness of the fish fillet. From the head end where most of the bones will be, fish fillets will be quite thick and on a low temperature the fish will take 7–10 minutes to cook through. From the tail end where there are no bones, the fillet is half the thickness and may only take 5 minutes to cook through.

* The protein in fish is very delicate, similar to that of egg whites. Egg whites are best cooked over a gentle heat. Fish is the same. I tend to cook the skin side over high heat to impart colour and texture to the skin, I then turn the heat down to the lowest setting and cook it gently and slowly for as long as it takes for the proteins in the fish to just set.

* Fish need only be seasoned with a light sprinkling of salt. If you are a fan of pepper, wait until it is served and then grind some fresh pepper over the top. Black specks of pepper on the soft white flesh of the fish fillet are unappealing and pepper tends to burn in a pan and become bitter. Try white pepper instead.

* To avoid excess smoke in the kitchen or on a barbecue, rub the fish with oil rather than adding the oil to the pan or hot plate. This minimal amount of oil is less likely to send a plume of smoke through the house.

* Do not be scared to slightly undercook fish. If you have ever eaten sushi or sashimi—Japanese staples using raw fish—then the notion of fish a bit underdone should set your mind at ease. Undercooked fish will not make you sick unless the fish was old before it was cooked.

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Prawn cocktail Recipes

Ingredients

1 iceberg lettuce, very finely shredded

24–36 fresh cooked prawns, peeled with tail intact

2 lemons, sliced into wedges

Cocktail sauce

250 ml mayonnaise

60 ml Worcestershire sauce

60 ml brandy

120 ml tomato sauce

1 tablespoon grated horseradish salt and pepper

60 ml pouring cream, lightly whipped

Method:

1. for the cocktail sauce—Mix all ingredients except cream. When combined, fold in the whipped cream. refrigerate, covered, until needed.

2. To assemble—There are several ways to put this dish together. The old way uses prawn cocktail glasses probably available at a ‘trash and treasure’ market on any given sunday. The new way is to form a small mound of shredded lettuce in the centre of a plate, prop the prawns against the lettuce and drizzle with cocktail sauce, serving each with a lemon wedge.

HINTS AND TIPS:

* You will need—cutting board, cook’s knife, paring knife, bowls, liquid and spoon measures and the equipment needed to make mayonnaise.

* The prawn cocktail was a dinner party hit in the 70s and early 80s, and made a tasteful comeback in some Restaurants in the late 90s. It still appears now and then, and if done well will be one dish that will never quite go away.

* Depending on the size of the prawns, 4–6 per person for an entree is enough. If this is to be more of a substantial dish, then use as many as would fit in the dish.

* Always check prawns for freshness, and ask when they were cooked and if frozen, how long they have been frozen for. Waterlogged or tired, old prawns will make this dish horrid.

* At a dinner party, wrap half a lemon in muslin or cheesecloth and tie neatly. This will prevent seeds from getting into the salad.

* Shred a small handful of flat-leaf parsley and mix into the lettuce to give the iceberg lettuce some lift.

* Make bite-sized prawn cocktails as finger food by using the inner leaves of cos lettuce as an edible cup—shred some of the outer leaves, chop up the prawns and drizzle with the sauce and serve in the smaller inner leaves.

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Garlic prawns Recipes

Ingredients

10 large green tiger prawns, peeled

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon butter

2 tablespoons crushed garlic

200 ml thickened cream

1 tablespoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Method:

1. remove the vein from the back of the prawn by slicing with a knife and scraping out the dark waste tract running the length of the prawn. you can also remove the head of the prawn if you like—if you do, refer to hints and tips.

2. heat the olive oil and butter in a sauté pan. When the butter begins to foam, add the prawns and cook for 1 minute either side. remove from the pan and set aside.

3. add the garlic to the pan and sauté without colouring for 30 seconds then add the cream. simmer, and reduce the cream by one-third. return the prawns to the sauce for 2 minutes, remove from the heat, stir in the parsley and serve.

HINTS AND TIPS:

* You will need—cutting board, cook’s knife, paring knife, spoon and liquid measures, sauté pan, tongs and wooden spoon.

* When talking prawns, ‘green’ refers to them being raw, not their colour. Green prawns can be purchased whole or already peeled and any shop selling seafood knows this term.

* It is worth investing in steel soap (a piece of stainless steel in the shape of a soap ‘bar’); it never wears down and it removes the smell of seafood, garlic and onion from your hands without stripping them.

* If you do remove the prawn heads, you can add them to a fish stock, or freeze them for when you get around to making the stock. This can be made with 1 onion (roughly chopped), 1 carrot (roughly chopped),

1 celery stick (roughly chopped), 1 kg fish heads or bones, 1 cup dry white wine, 12 peppercorns, 1 bay leaf and enough water to cover in a large pot. Bring to the boil then reduce to a simmer for 1 hour. Strain and either use straightaway or freeze in various-sized containers so you don’t have to defrost the lot and waste any.

* Fresh green prawns should be consumed the day they are purchased or defrosted; after 24 hours although still edible, they tend to oxidize and blacken.

* Fresh green prawns are best but the frozen variety can be used. The frozen prawns are sold as green prawn ‘cutlets’ and should not be mistaken for a crumbed prawn cutlet. The frozen variety is good in that the prawns are snap-frozen while on the fishing trawlers out at sea, guaranteeing an almost perfect fresh/frozen product.

* You can use either basil or coriander instead of parsley.

* Chopped chilli can be added with the seeds removed.

* This recipe can be served as a pasta sauce with long pasta like fettuccine or linguine.

* Alternatively, serve with steamed rice or simply with crusty bread and a crisp white wine.

* You can omit the cream and add 1 cup white wine for a lighter version, but allow several minutes simmering for the wine to reduce. Or use a light cream instead of the heavy cream suggested.

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Salt and pepper Squid Recipes

Ingredients

1 kg squid tubes, halved lengthways

250 g rice flour

200 g cornflour

3 tablespoons salt flakes

4 tablespoons ground white pepper

2 teaspoons caster sugar

4 egg whites, lightly beaten vegetable oil, for deep-frying (approx. 2 litres) lemon or lime wedges, for serving

Method:

1. open out the squid tubes, wash and pat dry. Place on a cutting board with the inside facing upwards. score a fine diamond pattern on the squid, being careful not to cut all the way through. cut into pieces about 5 cm x 3 cm. alternatively, keep the tubes whole and slice into rings or cut open as above and slice into strips.

2. combine the rice flour, cornflour, salt, pepper and sugar in a bowl. fill a deep-fryer or large saucepan one-third full of oil and heat to 180ºc (350ºf), or until a small cube of white bread dropped into the oil turns golden brown in 15 seconds.

3. Dip the squid into the egg white and then into the flour mixture, shaking off any excess. cook batches of the squid for 1–2 minutes, or until the flesh turns white and curls. Drain on paper towels. serve with lemon wedges.

HINTS AND TIPS:

* You will need—cutting board, cook’s knife, 2 bowls, weight and spoon measures, and a deep-fryer or large, heavy-based pot or wok for deep-frying.

* Squid and calamari are in fact two different creatures but are as close as cousins. In this recipe ‘either or’ should be your motto. Try also using the very tasty cuttlefish, a stumpier version of the aforementioned. Never use frozen squid tubes, especially large ones; they are watery and tough and you’d do better with a bag of rubber bands.

* Other pepper can be used in this recipe; replace the white pepper with 2 tablespoons black pepper (crushed and ground) and 2 tablespoons Sichuan pepper. It is recommended that the salt and peppers are drytoasted in a pan for several minutes, cooled on a tray and then pound in a mortar and pestle or a spice/coffee grinder to enhance their fragrance.

* To check the temperature of the oil—other than dropping a piece of bread into it—use a sugar thermometer.

* To dispose of used deepfrying oil, there are several steps that need to be followed.

 1. Allow the oil to cool completely, preferably until the next day.

2. Make sure you keep the container and lid in which the oil came or have an alternative container (like a used milk container with screw-cap lid).

 3. If the oil can be used again, it will need to be strained. This can be done through a paper towel-lined sieve, which is placed on a funnel directly over the storage container.

4. If the oil is being kept, keep it in the fridge until it is needed again. This keeps it out of the light and the coldness will keep the oil from turning rancid too soon.

 5. If the oil is to be thrown out, pour the cold oil straight into the bottle, fasten the lid and place in the bin.

 6. Or, if you deep-fry often, speak to your local council as they may have a collection depot nearby where you can drop off used cooking oil which they then on-sell to companies that make truck fuel or soap—true.

* Other flours can be used instead of the rice and cornflour mentioned in this recipe. If there is only plain flour in the pantry and the recipe must go ahead, then use plain flour. Selfraising flour will also work. In fact, any type of flour can be used with only minimal difference to the final outcome.

* Other seafood can also be adapted to this recipe. Try thinly sliced white-fleshed fish, or whole scallops. Some fish may not work quite as well and these include most oily fish like salmon, tuna, marlin and swordfish.

* Serve these tasty seafood morsels with a dipping sauce. Tartare sauce, thousand island dressing, sweet chilli, soy sauce or shoyu are all recommended. Accompaniments like lemon, lime, fresh chilli and

coriander can also be served on the side.

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Salmon patties Recipes

Ingredients

3 cups mashed potato, room temperature

415 g can pink salmon, drained

2 spring onions, finely chopped

1 tablespoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 teaspoon salt freshly ground black pepper

½ cup bread crumbs or plain flour

2 tablespoons olive oil

Method:

1. In a bowl, mix the mashed potato, salmon, spring onions, parsley, eggs, salt and pepper until thoroughly combined.

2. Shape into patties using a ½ cup measure—this will ensure the patties are all the same shape and size. Place on a tray lined with plastic wrap and rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour to allow the mixture to set before cooking.

3. When ready to cook, dip each patty in bread crumbs or flour.

4. Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium heat, add the salmon patties and cook until golden brown, flip and repeat on the other side.

HINTS AND TIPS:

* You will need—cutting board, cook’s knife, 2 bowls, frying pan, cup and spoon measures.

* This recipe yields about 12 small patties.

* Serve salmon patties with a simple green salad and mayonnaise.

* To make salmon croquettes—roll the mixture into small log shapes, dip in plain flour, then dip in beaten egg and roll in dried bread crumbs. Set on a tray until all are done. Leave in the fridge for 1 hour or so before deep-frying. If you’re not comfortable with deep-frying, then shallow-fry in plenty of butter. Great as finger food served with a tartare sauce or a simple mayonnaise.

* Try adding ½ cup corn kernels and ½ cup frozen peas to the mixture.

* Use leftover roasted vegetables from the previous night’s roast instead of the mashed potato. It will add an extra richness to the patties and is an alternative to making bubble-and-squeak.

* As a healthy option, place the patties on a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake in the oven at 220ºC for 10–15 minutes or until hot. This way you avoid the excess oil or butter and make the most of the omega 3 from the salmon.

* As a cocktail food, halve the size of the patties, fry as per recipe and top each with a dollop of sour cream and a sprig of dill.

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Seafood crepes Recipes

Ingredients

100 g butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

500 g white fish fillets, diced

12 green prawns, peeled, de-veined and sliced

12 local mussels, cooked and removed from shell

250 g crab meat, cooked

½ teaspoon crushed garlic

100 ml white wine

1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill

salt and pepper

1 recipe quantity mornay sauce

12 savoury crepes

Method:

1. heat the butter and oil in a pan. as the butter begins to foam, add the fish and prawns. When almost cooked, add the mussels and crab meat. sauté for another 2 minutes on high heat.

2. add the garlic, sauté quickly without colouring and then pour in the wine, sprinkle in the dill and season. remove from the heat and drain juices into a bowl.

3. Mix the seafood with the mornay sauce, adding some of the seafood juices if too thick.

4. spoon into crepes and roll, folding in the ends as each crepe is being rolled. Place on a tray lined with baking paper, and bake in a hot oven (220ºc) for 3 minutes.

HINTS AND TIPS:

* You will need—cutting board, cook’s knife, large pot, wooden spoon, weight, spoon and liquid measures, baking tray, baking paper and equipment needed for making crepes and mornay sauce.

* There are 3 recipes required for this dish so take your time and use the experience for a special occasion.

* The crepes can be made well in advance and kept frozen until the day they are needed.

* The mornay sauce is best made and kept warm ready for the seafood. The warm sauce and the hot seafood will be easier to mix together, providing an evenly dispersed seafood filling.

* The crepes can be filled and refrigerated the day before they are to be baked. Do not freeze as the mornay sauce will become watery.

* Dill can be substituted with fennel tops. If either of these herbs cannot be found, then parsley, chervil, tarragon, chives or lemon thyme could be used.

* Crab meat is available already picked from seafood shops. I recommend picking over the meat as the prepicked stuff will almost certainly have some shell in it.

* You will notice the cooking time of the seafood is minimal. Adhere to the quick cooking time to avoid overcooking the seafood when baked in the crepes.

* Leftover seafood filling can be used to make a seafood pie. Use pre-made puff pastry from the freezer section of the supermarket. Place the filling in individual ceramic dishes, top with a disc of puff pastry, brush with beaten egg and bake at 180ºC for 20 minutes or until the pastry is flaky and golden brown.

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