Stir-Fried Whelks

Do you remember that I went to Han Dynasty try whelks dish, but slightly frustrated because whelks were frozen, thus probably not British? (If you don't, please read here).

To not to remain defeated, I bought boiled whelks from the Indoor Market and stir-fried them myself.

These are 200g of boiled whelks, £1.20 per 100g, so these cost £2.40 (I bought them on 24th December, so I might have paid Christmas Eve premium; don't know).

I don't know this photo does justice, but 200g was too much for me; if you are going to making a similar dish as I did, you can count 100g per person.

[Sorry for the lack of presentation, but I cannot be bothered to make an effort only for myself.]

I chopped up random vegetables sleeping in the fridge and in cupboard, and stir fried with hoi shin sauce.

The whelks were actually delicious, better than the ones I ate at Han Daynasty (OK, it is rather predictable, isn't it?) I thought, however, hoi shin sauce was too strong for delicate whelks, and next time I will cook them with less strong flavoured condiments.

If you like whelks, it is really well worth trying. Recommended. Just a few pieces of advice are that whelks should either be sliced or chopped in smaller bits, as they are not softest thing and that they should not be cooked in wok too long, as they are already boiled and if you overdo, they become even more rubbery.

Buon appetito!

Sea bass from the Indoor Market

This Saturday, I bought a seabass from the Indoor Market, Birmingham. The super-fresh one cost me only £3.

I returned from Greece last week. You think Greece is seafood heaven, but larger fishes are quite expensive, definitely more expensive than at the Indoor Market given the current GBP/EUR exchange rate. There is no way you can get fresh seabass for less than €10 a kilo. In restaurant, it is £ 50-60 per kilo. It is prohibitive!

I pan fried the fish. It was superb. Birmingham is definitely a seafood heaven for me.

Oysters @ Indoor market

I like raw oysters, but they are too expensive at restaurants.

So when I want to eat it, the place I go is the Indoor Market. There are two shops that offer raw oysters, and I went one of them the other day.

I ordered two of them, and this is what I got.



They were not plump as much as I would have wanted (the Japanese oysters are more plump, when freshly open), but tasted sweet and fresh (they were alive until just a few seconds ago, so what else?)

70p. per one is not a bad deal!

They sell also eel jelly.



I tried once. It was ok, but I prefer eating them with soy sauce and wasabi.

Live crab from the market

In Birmingham in-door market there are two shops selling shell fish. They almost always have live crabs and I have always been curious about them, so one day I decided to buy one.

It cost less than I expected, £3.30, but as it did not contain so much meat, it is still expensive.

Before cooking it, I tried to kill it with a knife, but it did not die! I saw on tv how to kill it, and I expected easier. In the end I had to cook it alive, and I am really sorry for poor creature.



With crab meat I made sushi. Nice.

Yellow Fin Tuna Sashimi

One Saturday I found very good looking tuna in the Indoor Market of Birmingham. This is how it looked like.



This piece costed about £7.5, for a bit less than 500g (was about £15/kilo). I asked the fishmonger if we could eat it raw. She said it must be all right as it was brought in that morning. I don't suppose this meant that it was fished on the same day, but bought in from the wholesale market.

Although I was told that it was safe to eat raw, to be extra-cautious, I decided to marinate one half in shoyu (soy sauce) and the other half in lemon juice and olive oil.



This is Zuke-don. "Zuke" means soy sauce marinated tuna sashimi in Japanese. This came really beautiful. I am not necessarily able to buy such a good tuna everyday even in Japan. I ate it with "Yuzu-kosho", which is Japanese condiment, mixture of a citrus fruit called yuzu and chili.



This is lemon marinated tuna. It was nice, but as nice was the zuke-don.

I would surely buy again, if I find such a good tuna again.

BBQ 2 (Razor Clams)

Another thing I pretty much looking forward to bbq was these.




RAZOR CLAMS!!!

I have seen these clams often at the Birmingham central market, but I never had courage to buy, as 1) they are sold only in 10s, 2) relatively expensive, maybe £8 (ca. US$16) for 10. But this time, we were in 8, so we could share the burden.

What part of this shell is razor escapes me.




BBQ in operation. As you see in the photo, the meat shrinks quite a lot and there is not much to eat.

The taste, however, was superb!!! Very dense and deep flavour of sea clams, so intense that we could get quite a big satisfaction with only 1 or 2 clams.

We baked also some oysters, but everyone there agreed that razor clams were much superior bbq shellfish.

According to a friend from Kyushu area of Japan, these clams can be found also in Ariake sea and she used to go and collect them. It is called Mate-Gai in Japanese.

Afterwards we had lamb kebabs, pork and beef, until the early evening. We departed saying that we will bake something even more adventurous next time!

BBQ 1 (Lobster)

Last weekend. BBQ at a friend's house.

Plan was to bbq something we always have wanted, but never tried.

One of these was lobsters.




Costs 7 quid one. These were already steamed and red, but the original colour was almost black.


his is bbq in operation. As they were already steamed, we just reheated with bbqer (they call it barby), and it added a nice smorky flavour.




Each of us got half a lobster, and this was my share. It tasted great as I expected, but what was unexpectedly good was the brown meat (greenish brown paste like substance inside the "head"). It was sweet and flavoursome.



I would be very happy to try that again.

... to be continue

Goatfish

Birmingham has a large fresh-food market at the centre of the town. During weekdays I cannot go there as it is open only during the normal office-hour. Saturday is my day of investigate it.

The market closes at 4 to 5 o’clock depending on individual stalls, so if you go there after 3, you have better chance of getting bargain.

One Saturday afternoon, when I was walking around the market without having in mind what exactly to buy, I was stopped by a fishmonger offering a plate of fish for 5 quid.

I saw four colourful fish of various size, that I have never cooked or eaten. Asked the fishman what were they, and I was told they were “goatfish”. I was not sure how to cook, but the attraction of unknown was too powerful.




Back at home, I started to do some research about goatfish and discovered they have white meat with delicate taste, as they were in a same family as red mullets. They are often eaten in curry or deep fried. By the way, I learned also that they are called goatfish because they have a goat-beard like thing under their chin.




I decided to go for deep-frying, but I also tried bake in oven; this is oven cooked version. It was actually quite nice, but as the meat itself does not have strong flavour, deep-frying has the effect of concentrating enhancing it.

It was an interesting experiment.