Alas, Poor Kate, we knew her well...

Poor Kate. She's had a rough day - having been viciously attacked by one of our streams as we walked to the waterfalls on Strzeleki. It jumped up and attacked and bruised her buttocks and wet her shoes, jeans, jacket, blouse and somehow missed her hat and camera. And then we tortured her with the smell of fresh Anzac biscuits (cookies, American friends) and prevented her from devouring the double batch. Then we left her fingers raw with digging for pipis (aka clams) in icy water. And then to add brutality to assualt, torture, and freezing, I threatened her with snot. Well, raw oyster. I am one of those cooks that believes that you have to taste (unless toxic raw) all the ingredients raw, so you can learn how cooking alters them, and therefore what cooking methods work for different tastes. Raw seaweed yesterday, raw oyster today. I was under the mistaken impression I was being nice. Oh well. It appeals to a cook. And I did cook her very own squid for her, which she liked much more than the snot.

Thrownetting today produced a large number of small mullet, one small Australian salmon, and no less than 4 flounder - all close-ish to legal size, but I put them back as I didn't have a measure with me. Oh and five palm-size crabs, which I kept for Tal Grottli (uses whole little crabs to flavour stock). I really need a proper crab-hunting expedition soon - there must be millions about, judging by the holes. The problem with crabs is of course inverse-square law as far as getting meat out is concerned.

Seafood Secrets and the Flinders Taste Experience

This is a guest post from Chris McMahon. . .

Flinders Island has been a real seafood experience for me. Now if someone else had said something like that about a week ago I would not have been all that jealous - I've always enjoyed fish, but would never have put myself in the same ranks as all those crazy people who get so excited about seafood buffets.

Well it might be the fresh seafood we are catching here, or maybe Dave's excellent cooking, but my taste buds and my mind have both been expanding here. Last night Dave cooked me some abalone that he had gathered around the Island. Amazing!

At the same meal we had calamari - including the famous squid that my son Aedan and I caught off the jetty. I've had the odd bit of calamari and chips from the local fish and chip store - but I'm sure that is not even the same species as what I tasted last night! The flavor was complex and beautiful, the texture vastly different from anything I have tasted before. Excellent time had by all - the only problem is that Dave has effectively killed our ritual of going down the local fish and chip shop. None of us can face eating what had passed for calamari after tasting what fresh calamari properly prepared tastes like.

Today it was exploring over on the other side of the island, and a visit to a local wildlife sanctuary.

Tonight it was clam pasta, followed by freshly caught oysters fried in garlic butter and served on garlic bruschetta (we have been busy on Flinders today at low tide gathering the clams and oysters), then trevally (beautiful light tasting fish with light white flesh).



Now I have never been a fan of strong seafood tastes, and have shied away from them (i.e. lobster etc), but I could not believe the taste of the oyster! It gave me emotional and physical reactions in parts of my body I had never felt before. Of course mentioning this was giving me physical reactions led to the obvious jokes:)

Not only have I been introduced to these fantastic new flavors, I have even been permitted to glimpse a few of the secrets of the Freer kitchen at first hand as apprentice chef.

Tomorrow we are headed north to look for abalone.

My stomach will never forgive me going back to Brisbane:)

chicken drawing and oysters

Hell must be to be a chicken plucker with wet-sticky hands, a frantically itchy nose and feather allergy. Well, the level of hell reserved perhaps for lesser sinners, deserving only of irritation. Yesterday - as B said - was a busy one. Having been informed by several people that there were no oysters (or mussels) on the island, we collected our clams and found my imagination. I may tell you that my imagination was delicious fried in garlic butter. Exquiste even. I hope I discover the imaginary mussels too. I have found small ribbed mussels (by ton-loads) out in the bay. I'm sure they'd eat well enough, if we can't find blue mussels. I showed the imaginary oysters to John - one of the people who had told me I was out of luck. "Right! What kind of oyster is it, Dave?" he asked looking at the prize specimen (which was a good one - about 5 inches long.) "You tell me. I'm the bloke from South Africa. You're the local Tasmanian expert." A slow smile spreads across John's face despite his attempts to restrain it. "Right. Then it's a Tasmanian Native Oyster," he said utterly failing at the trusty native guide imitation by laughing. I think they're actually the flat oyster, Ostrea angasi - but I reckon probably Tasmanian Native oysters to us from now on. We were just off to start cutting some fallen deadwood (beginning on the winter fuel collection) with his chainsaw, having been visiting Lisa (who took me straight into a mental mixture of O'Grady's They're a Weird Mob and that Tuscany book. You can see how incredible hard work carved the farm and the garden out a piece of vacant bushland. The walls of the kitchen are hung with fresh and drying peppers. She still has, uses and plainly loves her wood stove. Outside the kitchen there is a sort of big porch area - real working farm style - not a place for sipping sundowners, but where bunches of garlic, more chillies and ropes of onions hang. The perserving cupboard is there too. Opened it reveals rows of spring-top jars, with every color and form of summer stored up. Tomatoes, pears, plums... The garden too fills me with envy and admiration. She's been on the island 50 years... there are fig trees, lemons, pears. The garden doesn't have the expensive Fort Knox appearance - and suffers a bit from possums - but it still has a vegatable fullness and richness that would make most of Salamanca market's barrows tuck up their wheels and creep away in shame. We're by this stage desperately trying to stop her giving more of her produce to us. We still came away with garlic and sweet red onions, carrots and pink potatoes and a bag of big mild chilli peppers(so mild I can actually eat them raw) She has explosive ones but we avoided those.
The chicken drawing (and this unless you are very demented, or name is Pollock, is not art) and plucking are best not written about. I am sure they'll eat well.