Gather:
1.5 kilos of seasonally available seafood.
(Octopus and prawns, bugs or crabs)
2 tbspns sweet chilli sauce
1 tbspn oyster sauce or kecap mantis
¼ cup of lime juice or lemon- or mixed.
4 crushed cloves garlic.
2 tbspns finely chopped corainder.
2 limes or lemons to serve sliced.
Brown bread and butter to mop it all up!
Method:
Remove and discard heads and beaks from octopus and cut them in half.
Combine the selected seafood with the marinade of sauces juicies garlic and herbs in a bowl and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Drain and discard.
Cook seafood in heated oiled wok or BBQ until firm and pink.

Salmon Fillets with Kipfler Potatoes. serves 4.
Gather:
Salmon fillets, one per person. 500g kipfler potatoes washed.
1 cup basil leaves 1 clove garlic 1 tbspn pine nuts toasted
1 tbspn shaved parmesan cheese ¼ cup olive oil. 1/2cup mayo
Bunch of cress or rocket or mixed herbs and spinach leaves.
Method:
Boil steam or microwave potatoes whole until firm but almost cooked. Leave to dryout. Halve lengthwise with skins left on.
Blend basil garlic nuts cheese and oil until chunky.
Coat the salmon with 2 tbspns of the pesto mixture. Cover and put in fridge. Combine remaining pesto mix and mayo in a small bowl press plastic over it. Cook Salmon and potatoes on hot greased BBQ uncovered, about 5 minutes max. Serve up on a big mash or a mound of aromatic rice. Fried rice anybody
Summer Salad of Squid, Avocado and Cress.
1 kg squid hoods.
Tspn ground cumin 2 tbspns freshly chopped dill 2 tbspns lemon juice 2 tbspns BBQ sauce.
¼ cup sweet chilli sauce ¼ cup peanut oil 1 finely grated lemon skin 2 cloves garlic crushed, 2 lebanese cucumbers sliced 1 medium avocado sliced thinly, Salad greens, lettuce or watercress or rocket etc. 1 tbspn water.

Cut the squid in half lengthwise and score the inside surface cut diagonally into small strips. Combine the spices herbs and juices with oil in a screw top bottle and mix.

Combine squid, lemon and garlic in bowl with half spice mix and refrigerate 30 minutes cover. Drain squid, discard marinade cook squid on heated oiled BBQ or in Wok and brown all over. Combine your greens, stir water into remaining spice mix and dress salad. Present squid rolls on salad with dressing over top.

6-8 large vine ripened tomatoes (the redder, the better)
10 gloves of garlic (whole)
handful of fresh basil (roughly chopped)
1/2 cup good quality olive oil - more if desired
salt and cracked black pepper
1 tsp sugar
penne pasta or rigatone.
grated parmesan cheese

Method:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
Cut tomatoes into about 6 pieces and scatter into a baking dish, along with garlic gloves, herbs, salt and pepper and sugar. Pour over olive oil, adding more if needed. Toss until tomatoes are covered with the olive oil and all ingredients are mixed through.
Bake at 180 for about an hour or until the sides of the baking dish are a lovely dark colour from the baked tomato pasta sauce.
Cook pasta according to directions on packet, drain - but save a bit of the water you have cooked the pasta in for the tomato sauce. This gives the sauce a lovely “glossy” look. Return drained pasta to the pot. Remove tomatoes from the oven and pour into saucepan and stir with a wooden spoon until thoroughly mixed, adding the water from the pasta.
You will notice that the garlic cloves completely disappear into the sauce and the pasta is coated inside and out with the sauce.
Serve immediately into bowls sprinkled with parmesan cheese and a sprinkle of chopped basil.
Serves 4.

This recipe is a great base for many other options. You can add a can of tuna and some capers just as you are stirring the sauce through the pasta. Other options are olives, artichokes, marinated capsicums, roasted veges, chicken, prawns, fresh baby spinach, baby rocket, chorizo, pancetta or a good chunk of gorgonzola - all added at the last minute.
A great salad to serve with this is a simple baby rocket and sea salt flakes tossed with olive oil.
Hot crusty bread : ciabatta or a sourdough torn into chunks

Half a cup walnut pieces.
1 clove garlic
1tspn sea salt
1 orange, zested and juiced
½ cup light olive.
249 g rocket or baby greens.
140g goat cheese.

Toss the leaves in the orange juice and divide onto four plates. Put 1/2 walnuts garlic salt zest and olive oil into blender and wiz to make a sauce. Core and peel the pears slice thinly and fan them over the green leaves top with goat cheese and gently pour the sauce over the lot. Sprinkle with remaining walnuts.

Pears. Pears have been grown in Australia since the first fleeters planted them along the riverbanks. They are an elegant taste accompaniment to most dishes and simple to prepare and have many ways to appear from baked in red wine to enhancing a savoury salad. Top names in pear stardom are the brown Beurre Bosc, the Packham and the Williams, the little red one is called a corella and Asia contributes the Nashi.

Pears are still wonderful right now so use them to the max. Pears go superbly with cooked hot bacon, any fresh farm cheeses or shaved hard Italian cheese on a bed of any fresh green leaves you like including baby spinach or mixed herbs with other green leaves. Try hot hazlenuts walnuts or pine nuts too in this salad, always roast them dry on a hot pan but watch them carefully before they burn, then toss them over the salad.

New Year 2009 is a wonderful occasion to try a change of ideas and update 2008’s resolutions.
The Chinese cooking methods have been winners for thousands of years from steaming to stirfry or deep fry, their food is delicious fast easy and cheap as well as increasing in popularity every year as other fads fade away.
Buy a tower of bamboo steamers, consider the sizes you may prefer, they are really worth the investment and each little basket looks good enough to take food straight to the table from the stove when serving to cocktail for 2, large crowds or starving singles in front of TV…
Always buy at least two baskets and a lid, this gives you the range of multilevel cooking so when cooking the fish in today’s recipe for example, just add another basket full of treats for an entrée or nibbles into another steaming basket just before the mains are cooked.. Produce a basket of steamed dim sims or little dumplings, make them yourself with little pastry circles from the Asian shop or buy them in big packs from supermarkets frozen sections.

All you need to dress them up is a collection of good saucy bottles, preferably with Asian labels. Into small dishes to accompany your Chinese feast, switch different tastes such as a choice of sweet chilli sauce a soy or oyster sauce. Its really worth a visit to China Town at this time of the year.

Recipe. Steamed crispy skin fish with ginger. Chinese style.

Buy platesized whole cleaned fish 300- 500g, scaled and gutted. Make sure they have bright eyes, firm flesh and are very fresh.
( Snapper bream whiting or baby salmon.)
One thumb sized piece of juicy fresh ginger, peeled and grated or chopped into matchsticks.
bunch of coriander or parsley chopped
5 tbspns peanut oil.
3 chopped spring onions.
1 tbspn caster sugar.
2 tbspns Chinese wine or sherry or apple juice.
1 tbspn sesame oil.
4 tbspns soy sauce.
A few cabbage or tough lettuce leaves for lining the steamer .basket. Shredded small chilli without seeds- optional
Method.
Wash and dry the fish and with a sharp knife slash the skin across a few times on both sides in the thickest parts of the fish.
Fill the bottom of the steamer or saucepan with water and bring to the boil. Line the basket with leaves and put the fish on top of them. Mix together the soy sesame oil rice wine and sugar then pour this over the fish.
Add the ginger and half the shallots and chilli.
Steam for 10 minutes with the lid on.
Give the fish a skewer test and then steam it for another five minutes if it needs that extra time to come away from the bone when pierced with the sharp knife.
To get a crispy skin effect: heat the oil to smoky, take fish out of steamer and pour the very hot oil over fish, add the oil to cooking juices. This produces exquisite smells hearty crackles and sizzles. Scatter fish with any leftover herbs and shallots and serve with favourite rice or salad..

Carving fish. Carve up your fish carefully by running a sharp thin bladed knife along backbone to lift flesh from head to tail with an egg lifter. Cut into 3 sections down to the bone then turn fish over and repeat. Pour hot sauces over the fish before eating it hot

Serves 6-8.

Ingredients
225g soft brown sugar and 100g butter for base.
4 ripe pears peeled cored and quartered.
225g plain flour.
1 tspn bi carbonate of soda
pinch salt.pinch of ground cloves pinch of nutmeg
4 tspns cinnamon 2 teaspoons ground ginger
175g black treacle 250mls milk 225g melted butter 2 eggs beaten.

Method.
Preheat oven to 180c.
Find a 250cm oven proof dish.
To make the base mixture place the sugar and butter in a saucepan over a low heat and melt together then turn up the heat and get it to bubble.

Pour into the oven dish and arrange the pears in it round side down on the bottom of the dish.

Mix everything else together and pour over the pears and bake for one hour in the lower half of the oven.

Test with a skewer and if the pudding is cooked it will come out dry, if wet mixture clings to the skewer then cook it for another 10 minutes.
Remove from oven and leave to cool before turning it out upside down onto a pretty plate, treacle is the magic ingredient here! Serve up with thick cream or best vanilla icecream.