a trip into cappos on glen osmond road on friday meant a weekend of cooking cheap seafood (local prawns for $9 a kilo)
friday night was kylie kwong's wonderful stir-fried prawn omlette from recipes and stories. you cook up a sauce of julienned ginger, tomato wedges, 2 tbs shao hsing wine, 1 tbsp sugar, 1/2 cup chicken stock, 1 tbsp light soy and 1 tsp black vinegar (I knew I bought that lonely bottle for a reason!), and 1/2 tsp sesame oil.
the omlette is cooked with ... eggs... garlic, lup cheong sausage (didnt have any 'cos I snacked on the last lot), white radish, mustard greens (I used chopped baby cos lettuce), prawns and shallots.
basically you make the omlette and pour the sauce on top. to give you more detail would discourage you from buying this excellent book.
sat night was prawn bisque with some prawn bisque stock from mures that I'd bought cheap at cappos. i found a recipe in the extraordinary zuni cafe cookbook, which encouraged me to add some diced veg, and then cream at the end. bloody marvellous, if somewhat rich. the mures stocks are great but i wouldnt be buying them often at full price.
last night was a variation on another kylie recipe, this time from her 'heart and soul'. i dont mind mussels occasionally, but my significant other does not. so i cooked up some atlantic salmon offcuts as well.
kwong's recipe involves sauteing sliced carrots, fennel, onions and ginger, then adding 3/4 cup white wine, 1/2 cup orange juice, sea salt, and some saffron water. mussels and orange zest are then added for 3 mins, followed by sliced tomato and chopped parsley and mint (the only two edible things going berserk in our garden). i cooked the salmon separately and threw it in at the end.
i didnt quite get this right, due to the ususal family comings and goings in the middle. if I had the customer sitting at the table waiting, I could really nail this!
I can't recommend kylie's books highly enough. the east-west meeting of ingredients and flavours is always stunning and inspired. they're probasbly my dinner party main meal place to go (apart from the Weber bbq option...)
so, the family are on seafood overload, the snook is in the freezer for another time and tonight we're onto chicken and bacon pasta... the PS here is that the Arkaba is an excellent spot for good, cheap wine. Houghton's for $8 a bottle is fine by me.and its just down the road from cappos.
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