I am so inspired by Gordon Ramsay – he really appeals to me. At first, I could not watch one of his shows – the bleeping turned me off. But, now, with the swearing being left in, I watch every program and I am hooked. DONE! my new favourite ending to any meal. This recipe for crayfish with caviar was inspired by The f Word
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Crayfish with Caviar
Ingredients
- 2 crayfish tails
- 2 slices fresh root ginger
- ½ stalk lemongrass crushed
- 1 star anise
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2 potatoes boiled and sliced
- 15 g butter
- salt and freshly ground black pepper to season
- caviar - if you can afford it a good teaspoonful per piece of crayfish
- mayonnaise
- truffle oil
- peas and watercress to serve
Method
- make a poaching liqueur with water, star anise, ginger, garlic cloves and the lemongrass
- tie the crayfish tails together, flesh side in and poach for 7 minutes
- remove from the water and slice into good chunks
- melt the butter in a frying pan and sauté the potatoes, seasoning well on both sides
- add the crayfish to the pan and heat through, seasoning well
- heat the peas in a pan, or in the microwave
- place the watercress in the middle of the plate
- put the peas on top of the watercress
- arrange the potatoes and the crayfish around the edges of the plate
- mix truffle oil to taste into your mayonnaise and top each potato slice with a good dollop
- top each piece of crayfish with caviar and serve!
Crayfish is a shellfish I get to use fairly often. We have a recreational permit to catch west coast rock lobster. And in season we go out as often as possible. This entails taking the boat from Gordons Bay Harbour to Rooiels. The wind has to be favourable to allow for this 40 minute journey. Once in the area where there are crayfish we throw nets into the water. Each net has a hake head in it. To get the head attached, a piece of string is placed through the eyes. And then the string attached to the net. The hake sits in the middle of the net. And the net lies flat on the sea bed. The crayfish climb into the net to eat the hake. We leave the nets down for as long as it takes to place 5 of them in the water. And then have a beer! Once this is done, the nets are collected in the order they were dropped. They have to be lifted as quickly as possible to ensure that the crayfish do not climb or fall out. And then once on board, they are sized. The small ones are tossed back into the water to allow them to grow. And hopefully land in our nets next year. The sized ones are set aside until we are done crayfishing. Once we are done, the largest are kept for the pot. The balance we throw overboard for another day. We are only allowed 4 per person per day so you want to get nice big crayfish to make it worthwhile.
I’ve posted the carrot cake challenge on For The Love Of Wine, but the administrators haven’t released it yet, will let you know when it’s live.
thanks! I am finding their site a pain to leave comments on 🙂
Fo rthe lucky amongst us to have a permanent sourse of crayfish, this must be heaven…for the rest of us…we will have to keep watching the F-word(with bleeping)!
thanks for the visit Nina – it was really a wonderful meal. Gordon creates amazing taste combinations.
Valuable info. Lucky me I found your site by accident, I bookmarked it.