Fishy Recipes SOS

[geordieden]

Fishy Recipes SOS

I love fish:inlove, hate waste and like experimenting with food. In particular I am interested in recipes that use fish or bits of fish that most folk throw away - the proviso being that it won’t make you ill (or in the case of puffer fish, possibly kill you!:rcard) and that it should taste at least palatable - or even to die for - no not in the pf context!

...so this is a very simple G.L.I.B. recipe that foxfish suggested I post on the recipe pages...

Grouper Liver In Butter

Grouper liver (from CLEAN waters only!) is a bit of an acquired taste - think fishy iron bars? It is my favourite of all foods - and also my two children! If you don’t experiment you don’t learn these things. Any liver is worth trying methinks - unless locals warn a particular fish is poisonous...

All you do is fry in plenty of butter/olive oil with lots of black pepper and salt to taste to make the butty of dreams - not too much liver though as it is a very concentrated flavour.

Cut the liver into 5mm strips and cook lightly - 1 min each side? then dip one slice of bread in the pan and put the liver on top and mop up the remaining oil with the other slice. Wash down with a couple of pints of Skull Crusher, or other favoured ale. If it was a large grouper or had been force fed with some French concoction, and had a particularly large liver, repeat the whole exercise until you feel full/nothing...cheers:friday

If there is any interest expressed in this new string I’ll publish my famous (at least in the BSAC Teesside Branch) Scallop Olternative Salad (for the educationally challenged...)
It was a desperate attempt to make something approaching Bahamian style conch salad which, apart from being a bit too too squishy, worked quite well.

So there you have it, an invitation to post weird recipes and hopefully help in finding a crunchy conch salad UK substitute?

 

[Huan]

I actually made fritters this week from Whelks.
The taste is quite similar to conch, although not quite as strong.
I used 6 whelks but would advise using a few more for better flavour.
I also used some crab meat in the mix and it added a great flavour.

Ingredients:
500g. conch meat or 8 large whelks
1/2 lg. onion
2 stalks celery
1/2 red pepper
1/2 green pepper
2 hot chillies
1/4 c. buttermilk/milk
1 tsp. Tabasco I use a lot of hot sauce
Salt to taste
1 egg
1/3 c. cornmeal
1/3 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder

Directions:
Put conch through food grinder or food processor. Process next five ingredients and mix with conch, adding salt and egg. Mix well. Mix together cornmeal and flour. Add conch mixture. Mixture should be thick. Add buttermilk and Tabasco. Drop by heaping tablespoon into deep oil until light brown. Drain. Serve with Grey Poupon mustard, mayonnaise and lime juice.

 

[geordieden]

Thanks for this recipe Huan

I am diving today and hope to get some conch so will report back on the conch version which I suspect will be delicious!
With conch you knock them out alive, what about whelks for this recipe? Also re whelks, have you had them raw as in Scorched Conch or Conch Salad? Also, are the waters around the UK clean enough to be eating these buggers in the first place?
The crab sounds a good idea but was it the brown or white meat or both? Also, was it cooked?

 

[Huan]

I poached the whelks in boiling water for about 3 minutes.
Never eaten Raw whelks, have you? I will try some if you report back first
I don't know about UK waters but here in the SW of Ireland the water is pretty clean due to the absence of any large industry.
Crab was actually Spider crab I used the white meat in the claws and the capsule where the legs join the body.
It is a bit of picky work to get all the meat out but it is wll worth it.
I only bother with the large buck crabs the small females don't have as much meat.
I cook crabs for about 15mins in salted water.

 

[geordieden]

I poached the whelks in boiling water for about 3 minutes.
Never eaten Raw whelks, have you? I will try some if you report back first
I don't know about UK waters but here in the SW of Ireland the water is pretty clean due to the absence of any large industry.
Crab was actually Spider crab I used the white meat in the claws and the capsule where the legs join the body.
It is a bit of picky work to get all the meat out but it is wll worth it.
I only bother with the large buck crabs the small females don't have as much meat.
I cook crabs for about 15mins in salted water.

Never eaten raw whelks either but I'd happily try them from your neck of the woods! Getting them out would be the next problem. If they were put in the freezer for just the right length of time then taken out of their shells really quickly? - hell I can skin conch and that is not for the feint hearted! If you want I can send you a conch salad recipe that should work perfectly methinks...

In Geordieland we call the capsule the “hoof”. If you take all the leg joints out of this structure it will easily collapse. Then when you pull the two halves apart getting at the meat is a lot easier - or at least this is how I do the UK (not sure of proper name) edible crab. While on that subject, I add honey to the pot to make the flesh sweeter - it then tastes a bit like spider crab:inlove? Try this out and let me know?

 

[Huan]

If you just smash the shell of a whelk with a hammer you should be able to get them out.
Spider crabs are much nicer eating IMHO than Brown Crab.
The problem with spider crabs is the Hoof/capsule is made of very thin shell and is consequently quite fragile and easy to break open anyway, if you smash it up too much you get a lot of crunchy stuff in with the crab meat.

 

[foxfish]

One of the local fishermen often brings Whelks he has caught in his crab pots to my local pub. They are already cooked in their shells & some of us enjoy chewing away at them. My brother once eat a Whelk dish served in a restaurant, he cut the roof of his mouth on a piece of shell left in the food. I can remember someone spotted this blood on his lips, the cut bleed for ages! It would appear Den that you rather enjoy eating the more unusual parts of fish!

 

[Huan]

How do you eat them from the shell? Do you just dig em out and break off the guts and then chew away at the foot?

 

[foxfish]

That's right, not every ones idea of fun but after a few pints not to bad!

 

[Huan]

Whatever floats your boat!
seriously though whelks have a very nice flavour.
Do the ones you get have a mottled yellowish white foot with black spots?

 

[geordieden]

One of the local fishermen often brings Whelks he has caught in his crab pots to my local pub. They are already cooked in their shells & some of us enjoy chewing away at them. My brother once eat a Whelk dish served in a restaurant, he cut the roof of his mouth on a piece of shell left in the food. I can remember someone spotted this blood on his lips, the cut bleed for ages! It would appear Den that you rather enjoy eating the more unusual parts of fish!

Re unusual parts of fish - my dad used to eat the whole whelk and I found that gross and it put me off them big time! Looking forward to trying the more traditional for a change...
One of his favourites that is nice is what he called Prairie Otster - open a live mussel and season up with a bit of vinegar and pepper. Haven’t trid this for years for lack of quality mussels and suspect lime and tobasco would be good - when I get the chance I’ll let you know...

I was out line fishing yesterday - new to this game, I’d only had 10 minutes notice and had had no breakfast so it seemed like the perfect time to try raw fish as we were baiting up with live fish we had just speared. Quite nice really and the salt was no problem...

So, what should I carry to improvise some pseudo Suishi?

 

[Huan]

Take a little tube of Wasabi and a small bottle of Kikkoman soya sauce.
and a sharp knife.

 

[geordieden]

Take a little tube of Wasabi and a small bottle of Kikkoman soya sauce.
and a sharp knife.

Thanks for the advice Huan

Sounds familiar this Wasabi - hot as hell as I recall? My daughter made some Suishi for me ages ago so I suppose some rice would go well or would some kind of wrap work?

In a previous reply you said

“Spider crabs are much nicer eating IMHO than Brown Crab”

Is the brown crab you refer to the same as the edible crab known as Cancer pagurus? I’d love to just send a pic but as yet don’t know how to - it’d be a lot easier!

Spider crabs are naturally sweet but edible crab can be superb - especially when combined with the brown body meat - and especially when seasoned up. They grow up to 11 lb apparently and I’ve had 6 lb ones that were full and delicious.
What does IMHO mean?

Cheers Den

 

[Huan]

IMHO= in my humble opinion.
Don't get me wrong, I like brown crab/edible crab/Cancer Pagurus too but I find that you get a lot more white meat out of a good spider than a brown.
One of the nicest ways I have had crab was potted, in butter.
time consuming to make but very tasty.
I like the brown meat also , but it is quite strong and as such needs to be mixed with the whitemeat.
You should be able to buy Sushi Nori quite easily in health food shops, this is the seaweed that sushi is wrapped in.
The correct rice is also important, you have to get sushi rice and rice vinegar to make it work properly.
Try mixing crabmeat with Avocado and a tiny smear of wasabi in a sushi roll.

 

[geordieden]

Try mixing crabmeat with Avocado and a tiny smear of wasabi in a sushi roll.

Thanks for the advice re Suishi and the potted crab sounds good - do you have you a good recipe for potted salmon?

On Monday I speared a crawfish that was hiding in a large coral head where we had been searching for a large Chub that we’d hit but only stunned. It wasn’t using it’s whips and I was very lucky to have spotted it at all. Anyway I nuked the tail and made crawfish salad with it the next morning. That’s when I noticed it had a virtually hard shell beneath (see pic) the old outer shell! - new to me as I assumed they shed their shells and then hid till they had hardened. This strategy makes more sense methinks!
If this was a rare and valuable specimen it’s a shame as I’ve eaten the evidence... but I had frozen the head for a local. That was strange too in that when I snapped off an antenae - to remove it’s intestinal tract (ouch!) instead of snapping clean the “meat” was left inside. I now suspect that this was the new shell.

 

[akrikel]

Hi all, just some advice from the far south. Fish liver contains very high amounts of vitamin A. Very good for you in small doses, but be careful that your body does not react negatively to it. Also some species of fish (eg red steenbras in south africa, a large bream) has such high amounts of vitamin A, that it is actually toxic. Having said that, fish liver is great! I fry my liver and roe together after a light flour dusting. Nice and crispy with brown bread and beer! Definitly the hunter's reserve.