Crab soup

So far the only crabs I have been able to catch are about an inch long - I gathered a bunch of them at lunch time (low water)in about 10 minutes and some tiny ribbed mussels, along with some little mantis shrimp and some burrowing shrimp (my experience with the latter two says 'bait'). These are the little hoon pea-crabs I've mentioned before - and catching them was a matter of finding a bunch of them pigging out on a clam and swooping in from behind (nippers in front).

I've been looking for a way to deal with our most common rock-fish - wrasse. So I thought I'd try a mix between Tal-Grottli bisque (grottily?) from IIRC Malta and Bouillabaisse - cook the crabs whole and then toss the mix into a blender, sieve the shell out, and at least get the crab flavour. So I did this, along with some of Inge's tomatoes, Lisa's red onions and garlic and a red jalapeno chili. Some sherry stuff we'd been given and Tasmanian pepper - not a single bought ingredient, outside of the olive oil I softened the onion in. The soup was then brought to a rolling boil and I added the wrasse (chopped into boneless inch-wide squares, and some abalone just after. The fish had about 3 minutes and the abalone maybe 2 before I took it off the heat. I added the pre-cooked mussels and some of my chopped parsley. Served with fresh pao rolls (made with flour and some potato - the way they did Mozambique to save flour) it was superb - and near as dammit all free or foraged food. I could feel self-righteous and thrifty for nearly half a bowl - which was as long as took me start feeling a little unwell. I need a stronger liver.... it's RICH. Still, you can eat wrasse like that and really enjoy it.

John-boy popped in to lend us a couple of paddle-skis - one kid-size, the other a real fishing sit on kayak I can definitely set crab-traps from. Work presses so I need to get the wordcount up before I go and try this. Thank heavens the weather is set lousy for the next few days. It makes resisting temptation so much easier.

Killikrankie and the north parts

'If ye hae'seen wha' I hae' seen, on the Braes o' Killikrankie-o' (Scots trad.) -- We took the boys on the big expotition to the North yesterday, despite the weather actually being worse. Killikrankie - besides being the site of a famous battle in Scotland is also the name of a village on Flinders and the climbing area about 2 km north. Very useful multipurpose name I am sure could be used for a bunch of other stuff too:-). It's about 40Km beyond the black stump (the black stump is clearly marked on a large fire-blackend stump - local sense of humour appeals to my own twisted sense of the same.) The wind was gale force, so we were more doing a scout than anything else. The crag is magnicent -wind-carved (there is a little zephyr here once in a while) and convoluted granites, overlooking a coastline of perfect little coves, looking as if some amatuerish chef had attacked the pastry-sheet of land with a scallop-edged cookie-cutter. The sea was wild and tormented and churning with torn seaweed drifts. We still managed to catch some 'wrasse' (scorned locally, very popular in the far East). Barbs caught our first Flinders fish - and later, the biggest too... well nearly. She got this enormous fish to the very edge and James tried to help her land it. I assume he must have touched the leader, as it broke - and James -hyper with excitement jumped in after it. It slipped away - but unfortunately the water didn't. With the wind and wet, we had a very cold James. Anyway, we have now caught a local fish or three (we fished for about 3/4 of an hour and caught about 14 of these things - learning all the time) 3 were size and we brought them back. They're fairly soft-fleshed delicate flavour - not clean-flaking, and probably respond badly to even the slightest over-cooking, but otherwise perfectly edible.

BigPond - you know the internet provider part of Telstra that gave us such a dreadful run-around, finally got around to trying to reply to their reply within 48 hours max online service -- a week later. They appear not have the vaguest what is happening in their own company as they had no idea what had happened since. Ah well. Every ointment must have its fly. With luck we'll deal with this one too.

And now to work. books need to be written.