A touch of India, and scallops
Scallops don’t need much assistance really. If you’re adding extras, make sure they are not of the sort which overwhelms. Allow the scallops to speak for themselves, and go for them as a light main course, perhaps preceding your best plate of cheese.
Onions, cooked slowly in the pan are a perfect accompaniment for just about [...]
Scallops on the half shell with a little soy
For years we suffered the flavour loss which comes from that shonky fishmongers’ method of profiting by soaking scallops, purportedly to clean them of any muck from the sea. All they did was rinse them of their best, most subtle flavours, and add large volumes of water, water we paid for on the scales.
Then one [...]
A prawn salad with Gnocchi
There are some old delicacies that just wouldn’t be the same without cream. Gnocchi is one of them. And the sauce that comes from belting down prawn stock with cream is just one of the most intense flavours of cooking. That’s the simple way, one-directional cooking, and by and large it’s fine. But now and [...]
Snapper in a tomato sauce
My past has come back to haunt me. As I read my cholesterol level on the lab sheet at 20 per cent higher than the optimum, my mind raced back through all those throwaway lines from food columns of the past: ‘drown the lot in butter’; ’serve with cream or ice cream, or better both’; [...]
Poaching orange roughy
The previous butter-soaked fish dishes came from my restaurant days, somewhere between 1983 and 1988. The following was written in May, 1990, when the penny was starting to drop.
I think I must be falling for this health propaganda in some sort of subconscious way. Not so long ago, if you gave me a fish to [...]
Bugs or scallops in a tarragon butter
You must learn from your mistakes. It was during one special dinner that a disastrous series of events, interspersed by one or two sacre bleus, led me to one of the most delectable treats I have tasted. Certainly the meal was the best part of an hour behind schedule, but the result was remarkable.
By great [...]
Prawns in a butter and black pepper sauce
I have flirted and failed with diets for so long I cannot look at the word these days without being riddled with guilt and self-doubt. I know all the reasons why a sensible diet should be part of my life. I eat too much, liking food for its delicious flavours and tastes, that I just [...]
A parcel of mussels
There’s another, even more impressive-looking version of the previous dish, which is easier to prepare — crepes instead of puff pastry — and can be made well in advance. In the end, it looks like a purse. Flavour and wit together. It was one of the most consistent dishes on the old restaurant menu, and [...]
Mussels in puff pastry
This dish and the next were consistent winners during my restaurant days. We served one or the other or variations day and night, week in week out, and never once thought of how much butter was in them. I offer them to you now, to allow you to note how times change and how we [...]
Ocean trout in a froth
Not so long ago, the only place you could get hold of salmon was from the freezers of the big department stores — and it would have arrived there via long and expensive trips from Scandinavia, Canada, and occasionally Scotland. No more. A superbly efficient salmon and ocean-run trout farming industry is flourishing in Tasmania [...]