Sunday, June 13, 2010
Have Geeks, will travel
Well, the boys are in demand for more than their now famous Saveloy boiling skills, (tested to near destruction at the market), now being called to sort out DVDs and computers. In theory they were going to fish Emita and stop and do some geek-work at some friends up there, while I continued to deal with Hekate and Constantinople. However in the fashion of such things the trip to the beach never quite got there. I fed them on bangers and mash with my home-made rollmops and the gerkins made of my cucumbers. It appears I can do that again, but the roll-mops are rather hard. Any bright ideas on how to stop vinegar making fish chewy appreciated. I need to do another batch.
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Signs of the modern world. Geeks are popular wherever they go - even Flinders Island :)
ReplyDeleteI mentioned your problem with tough pickled herring to Mitsuko (my wife), and she immediately said, "Oh, he has herring? He should make herring and buckwheat noodles." Turns out that herring, cooked in very hot stock, with buckwheat noodles are a Kyoto specialty, which everyone loves. I would guess you can substitute other noodles.
ReplyDeleteI explained that you really wanted to make pickled herring, and she said she thinks the vinegar makes it tough, but maybe cook the herring first?
Well, I want to grow buckwheat :-)(should thrive here, and buckwheat pancackes are delicious. Noodles probably would be too. It's quite a different taste. The Rollmops were not made with herring, but the omnipressent wrasse. Oddly enough the only way they're really tasty is cooked very briefly in a hot stock. I'll try some cape pickled fish with them - which does involve 'cook first'. Please do ask your wife, BTW, if she has any advice on the use of seaweed? It's big in japanese cooking but I have no experience at all baring having made fairly bleah jelly from some (Porphyra capensis IIRC).
ReplyDeleteHeh, Neill Even MORE on Flinders island, where they are rare.
ReplyDeleteI asked. She says don't even think about nori -- the dried sheets -- too hard to prepare right. But wakame and kombu she thinks are possible. I'm now supposed to take pictures and send them to you. Apparently you find it, pick it, wash it, dry it, and then can eat or cook with it. More directions with the pictures. Wikipedia seems to think you may have wakame.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen wakame - if it's invasive it's relatively unlikely here (maybe one ofthe major ports?) but I think kombu - is what I have been using for a source of plant-food :-). It's a brown algae with ribbon fronds and a long stalk - laminaria or ecklonia I think. Back in South Africa we would have called it 'kelp'.
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