Cooking Eating Storytelling
Mussels Cooked in White Wine & Parsley… Imagine sitting by the water with a bottle of Moët and a big bowl of freshly cooked mussels to graze on… this is what you call a great day!
Fishing rods poised, ready to catch a lovely bream to have for dinner – Holiday’s don’t get much better than this.
Sun soakingly delicious… Blondie
Brazilian Fish Stew – Moqueca is a beautiful, full flavoured fish stew with coconut milk, heat from chilies, sweetness from the capsicum with a zing of lime juice… such gorgeous flavours all in one bowl.
You could use any seafood/crustacean in this recipe, actually, more the merrier. If I had more on hand I certainly would have thrown them in. I like to keep the fish fillets whole rather than cut into pieces and to very quickly sear the fish and prawns, remove them and then de-glaze the pan with the stock. It’s incredibly fast so just have all your ingredients ready to be thrown into the pan.
Eat it with a bowl of rice, crusty bread or like a soup with rice noodles – yes, not very Brazilian but oh so good!
Slurp away… Blondie xx
Soft Shell Crab in a Sesame Tempura – This recipe is now one of my all-time favourite dishes to make as it is so simple and the prep involved is really quick and easy, but you end up with a simply stunning dish both in taste and in presentation.
I have served soft shell crab twice so far, in the Blondie/Bella dinner party nights that we hold for each other’s families every 6 weeks or so. The first version was this recipe but I threw some coriander into the batter for a bit of Thai inspiration – I named that dinner ‘All Thaied Up’.
As you can guess from the title, it was a Thai/Asian theme. There were 3 courses (4 really, but dessert was a purchased pistachio ice cream when my peanut ice cream didn’t work out so it’s not included as a course). Just prior to this dinner party two fellow makeup artist friends took me out to Longrain here in Sydney, for a belated birthday dinner. The night was the hottest night on record for Sydney – it was still 33 degrees at midnight! People were walking around with their shirts lifted off their bodies and skirts hitched up just to try and cool down. It was a funny sight in Sydney at night, especially in Surry Hills. Anyway, I was so inspired by Longrain that I purchased Martin Boetz’ book, Longrain: Modern Thai Food, and set forth to recreate some of his dishes (by the way, the Ginger Rogers cocktail is an absolute MUST! Although it’s unfortunately not in the book)
The first course for my dinner was the Light Red Curry of Angus Beef, the second course was the Peanut Curry of Grilled Beef (I did it with lamb) and the third was the Sesame and Coriander Soft Shell Crab (not a Longrain recipe). The fourth was going to be his (Martin’s) Peanut Ice Cream, which was just sooooo amazing, but the recipe isn’t in his book so it was purely guess work – which failed! But my soft shell crab was fantastic! I served it with 2 dipping sauces, a sweet chili sauce, and a ginger and soy sauce.
If you are brave enough you can purchase live crabs, but I’m not! I get my soft shell crab from an Asian mini mart in Chatswood. They come frozen in a nice little box of about 10 or so, with each crab neatly put into a plastic sleeve which means I always has some in the freezer for emergencies!
Blondie