Handmade pasta in a creamy crayfish bisque and dill sauce

Handmade pasta in a creamy crayfish bisque and dill sauce

2 crayfish
1 onion
1 stick celery
1 Carrot
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons dill
2 tablespoon tomato paste
3 tablespoons flour
700 ml stock

100 ml cream
1 cup peas
2 tablespoons dill
1 tablespoon parsley

Pasta (or buy a packet)

2 cups plain flour
3 eggs
1 tablespoon oil

To make pasta: put the flour, eggs and oil in the Thermomix(or food processor) and blend to form firm dough. or mix them together in a bowl.  If the mix is wet knead more flour in on a floured bench. Then roll the pasta through the pasta machine up to number 6. Cut the pasta on the fettuccini cutter on the pasta machine and cook for approximately 4 minutes in salted boiling water, (This can be done earlier, even the day before, and cooled, and rolled in a little oil, then the pasta reheated in the sauce when serving the dish).

Or cook the packet pasta following the directions on the packet

To cook the crayfish: Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil add fish when the water comes back to the boil cook for 8 minutes. Take out and plunge into ice water, leave to cool and drain. Take all the meat from the shells.

To make the bisque in a thermomix, crush the cray shells and put in the mixing bowl with the carrot, celery, onion, garlic and butter and cook on reverse stir for 3 minutes 100C add tomato paste and flour and cook for a further 3 minutes on reverse stir 100C. Add the stock and cook for 25 minutes 100C on reverse stir. Season with salt and pepper and strain into a pan.

To make the bisque in a pot: crush on of the cray shells up roughly and put in a heavy based pot with the chopped carrot, onion, garlic, 2 tablespoons of dill and the butter cook for 3 minutes add the tomato paste and flour and cook for a further 3 minutes, then add the stock and cook for 25 minutes stirring regularly. Season with salt and pepper and strain into a pan.

To finish the sauce heat the bisque with the cream, add the chopped craymeat and dill, peas, parsley and hot pasta, season and serve with the parmesan.

 

Tomatoes; oysters topped with tomato tabasco and vodka

I love home grown tomatoes. I think they are the most rewarding food from the garden because they taste so much better home grown than store bought.  If I only had a small space to grow a few vegetables each year tomatoes would be at the top of the list. As well as being easy to grow, half my plants this year are from seeds that I have collected from previous years, they have proven to be quite hardy plants, they survived without any attention during sweltering heat my ten day absence during the bushfires. There are so many uses for frozen or bottled tomatoes through the year, curries, pastas, sauces, chutneys, soups that they will never go to waste.

Oysters topped with tomato, tabasco and vodka

12 oysters in the ½ shell
2 vine ripened tomatoes
60 ml vodka
Splash of Tabasco to your liking

Dice tomato into a fine dice, and vodka and Tabasco and let sit in fridge for a least 15 minutes, (no longer than 4 or so hours so the tomatoes are still fresh) top each oyster with the salsa

oyster-tomato-tabasco-1-of-1