A good Snoek braai

It was a great weekend! First of all the weather played along and we were able to braai and also my friends coming up from Capetown were able to see the spring flowers which are making a fantastic show at the moment.Dick and Janet arrived first on their lovely ST1300 with the great sounding "Two Brothers" exhaust cans, woke up the neighbours a bit. Joe and Annie arrived shortly after, not being bikers they drove up.Our first course was a big bowl of steamed fresh mussels (obviously!) and I made a creamy brandy sauce with which I drenched them, we ate them and sopped up the sauce with crispy french bread. Rather good according to my friends, Joe and Annie tucked into them. Next was the Snoek Thyrsites Atun which is plentiful on the west coast where it forms migratory shoals and is lovely and fat in the winter, I bought a big one because I make good use of any leftovers.

It doesn't take long to braai a Snoek over moderately hot coals and I made up my usual baste with a little olive oil into which I melted about 50g of butter, then I added a tablespoon of crushed garlic, a cup of lemon juice and about half a cup of smooth apricot jam. Once it had all simmered into a nice thick syrup I brushed it liberally over the fish - delicious!Janet made some gralic potatoes and a salad and we had a lovely, typical west coast lunch. My afternoon was made complete when Joe and I went to play pool and I beat him 5 games to 3! That evening we had a good chat in my bar and listened to music before a relatively early night, it had been a good day and Sunday I had a lamb potjie planned.