Another Seafood Weekend

On Friday morning at about 0730 or maybe a bit later, because Janet and I have decided to start our long weekend off with a bath and a bottle of bubbly, I am off to the Buffalo rally in Mossel Bay. I am really looking forward to the 540km ride and the camping weekend and in case you were wondering, Janet has taken Friday off as well and is going away with Linda to a self catering resort.

I first started going to the Buffalo rally in the early 80's and the last one that I went to in Port Elizabeth was the 15th anniversary rally in 1983, they were different in those days, somewhat rougher and I really wanted to go to the 2003 Buff in Mossel Bay to get a badge 20 years on but circumstances prevented it. I went to the 2004 rally and really enjoyed myself, one of the reasons that I am so keen to go to this one is that I believe that it will be the last one in Mossel Bay, apparently the good citizens of that town have decided that in spite of the massive injection of cash into the food/booze/accommodation establishments it is just not worth putting up with the biker trash for one weekend.
Anyway rest assured that I will post all of the details and a lot of photos of the weekend but what I really want to let you know about is this past weekend - we had a fantastic seafood weekend with our friends Dick and Janet who came up to visit us on Saturday.

My weekend started on Friday afternoon but unfortunately I had to phone Frank and cancel the FA Cup as I was too busy to get away, we were able to meet at "Jeffro's" for a beer just after 3pm though and had a good chat about the upcoming rally. Frank is going on Thursday morning with some of the guys so I expect that he will have a party that night and I will not see much of him on Friday afternoon when I get there, we'll see.

I really want to tell you about this past weekend though, because Dick brought with him a lovely size Galjoen which is something that I haven't had for ages. I had already taken out a white stumpnose and a Hottentot so we were going to have a lovely trio of fish.

First I opened a dozen lovely big oysters which we had with the usual lemon juice, tabasco sauce and ground black pepper and then I steamed some fresh mussels in white wine and covered them in a creamy ginger liqueur sauce which my friends really enjoyed, we ate all of the mussels and sopped the sauce up with fresh bread rolls.

After a break to let the starters settle it was time for the fish and I got a lovely bed of coals on the go, I "butterflyed" the fish for ease of braaiing but first had to show you what they looked like;

Here are the fabulous fish that I braaied; top Galjoen (dichistius capensis), Hottentot (pachymetopon blochii) and the White Stumpnose (rhabdosargus holubi). Here's what they looked like when we served them up;Janet even agreed that she would have some fish as long as they weren't going to be too "fishy", she prefers her fish to be "chickeny", I didn't tell her that the Galjoen is a very strong tasting fish. The meal was lovely, Janet made garlic potatoes and a salad with Feta cheese and olives as an accompaniment. Local people say that when you have Hottentot what you must do is stuff it with herbs, onions and tomatoes and when it is ready you eat the onions and tomatoes and throw the fish away, but I don't think it is that bad. It was a wonderful seafood meal.

Sunday morning Janet and I made some delicious fish cakes for breakfast with the fish that was left over and then we took a drive down to Paternoster to have a beer on the hotel veranda, it was a lovely calm sunny morning and we sat and chatted over a couple of beers and then Dick decided to buy some Crayfish from the locals, he ended up buying three lovely big ones for us to braai for lunch. Janet had already said that she did not want one, she was adamant that she wanted some meat, I was very excited because I had not eaten Crayfish for many years.

Back at home I steamed them for about five minutes and then split them open down the back to braai over some moderate coals, I sprinkled them with lemon juice, covered them with butter and grated cheese and left them to cook through - what a pleasure!

Just look at that, fresh from the West Coast, they were absolutely delicious and what an unbelievably good weekend it was for the three seafood lovers! I did not bother to take any photos of the lamb ribs and boerewors that I braaiied for Janet but she seemed to be happy!

There's nothing quite like it is there? Fresh seafood, that's one of the reasons why I am happy living on the West coast. The next blog post will be about the Buffalo rally, we'll speak again soon.