I spent most of my career working with seafood while running Australia’s largest recreational cooking school, Sydney Seafood School at Sydney Fish Market. I love the quality and diversity of Australian seafood and I’ve learnt a bit about preparing it from my chef friends over the years, we even wrote a book on it! Here are some of my favourite seafood recipes.
BBQ Prawns with Smoky Garlic Butter I love this method of grilling prawns in their shells without turning them onto the flesh side – the shell protects the delicate meat from overcooking and keeps them deliciously juicy. I find it easiest to cut off the heads before cooking them as they fit in my char-grill […]
Potted Trout Potting is an old English technique for preserving meat or seafood by storing it under a layer of fat, similar to French confit or rillettes. The food was traditionally cooked thoroughly to eliminate excess moisture then packed into a ceramic pot. Meats with a lot of natural fat could be sealed under a […]
Crisp Prawn-Topped Eggplant These crisp discs of prawn-topped eggplant are one of my favourite yum cha dishes and I’m grateful to my friend Cheong Liew for teaching me how to make them. When he cooks them, he adds pork mince (and back fat) to the prawn mixture, so feel free to experiment using either or […]
Bottarga & Lemon Pappardelle I love pasta! I also love lemon and bottarga, so I created this simple recipe combining all three. It’s inspired by my friend and co-author, Giovanni Pilu who introduced me to the joys of bottarga along with many other Sardinian ingredients (you can order his Aussie-made bottarga online and scroll to […]
Hot & Sour Prawn Soup Hot and sour soups are a classic on Thai menus. Although the version containing prawns, dtom yam gung, is perhaps the best known in Australia, ‘dtom’ simply means to boil and ‘yam’ to mix or toss together and these soups can be as basic or as complex as you care […]
Thai Fish Cakes In Thai cuisine, dishes such as fish cakes and spring rolls are snacks, often bought from street vendors between meals. Thai fish cakes, tod man pla, have a springy texture, achieved by repeatedly ‘slapping’ the minced fish against the side of the bowl to develop the protein. Red fish works particularly well […]
Portuguese Sardine Pate Chef Jose Silva says: “Paté de sardinha, olives and bread are almost always on the table when you walk into a restaurant in Portugal, before you even order.” Sardines abound in Portuguese waters and are one of the country’s most popular fish, with each person consuming an average of over 5kg per […]
Tempura Tempura is an example of how the Japanese take inspiration from other cultures and make it their own. Battered fried seafood and vegetables was introduced to Japan by Portuguese missionaries in the 1700s – the Japanese lightened the batter, added a delicate dipping sauce and created what is now considered one of their most […]
Aussie Solomon Gundy Solomon Gundy is a classic Jamaican spread (also called solomon-a-gundy) made from heavily salted herring so strongly smoked that the flesh turns a reddish brown (thus ‘red herrings’). The rather odd sounding name comes from the old-fashioned English term salmagundi, referring to a highly-seasoned dish made from a mixture of meat and […]
Open Fillo Sandwich with Anchovy Sauce This simple dish is inspired by one of my favourite MG Garage starters. I love the idea of sandwiching chopped olives between 2 sheets of fillo and wonder what else might work in this way. Janni used to make a triple stack of the olive-studded fillo sheets with the […]
