Have you EVER seen anything as delicious as this? Admit it, you're as green as grass looking at that photo. If you aren’t, it means you have no idea just how spectacularly good New Zealand crayfish really tastes. Swimming in the clean blue waters of the Pacific, these shy rock dwellers may live sixty years before reaching this magnificent size…so perfect for the cooking pot!
So how did I land these two enormous, cooked, ready to be devoured specimens here in our steamy little paradise? It’s all thanks to my Dad, crayfish catcher extraordinaire. A bit of explanation is in order. My Dad has dived since he was in his early teens, which adds up to a few decades by now. In that time he has not only perfected his technique, but also identified lots of out of-the-way spots that no one else knows about where he can count on finding a few good size crayfish to bring home for the pot.
So how did I land these two enormous, cooked, ready to be devoured specimens here in our steamy little paradise? It’s all thanks to my Dad, crayfish catcher extraordinaire. A bit of explanation is in order. My Dad has dived since he was in his early teens, which adds up to a few decades by now. In that time he has not only perfected his technique, but also identified lots of out of-the-way spots that no one else knows about where he can count on finding a few good size crayfish to bring home for the pot.
As kids, my sisters and I grew up on a regular diet of fresh crayfish, fish, scallops, occasionally paua (black gold!) and other seafood and believe me, we crave it like oxygen.
Dad’s first experiment with exporting fresh food from NZ happened three years ago, when he brought a whole grass-fed New Zealand fillet steak (that’s about 3 kilos of prime juicy melt-in-your-mouth beef to the uninitiated), vacuum packed and on-ice, to Holland. It turned out that nobody is bothered about stuff being brought out of NZ – being a little group of islands at the end of the world and hence disease-free turns out to have some advantages after all. So when he came to Singapore in November, he upped the ante by bringing two frozen crayfish and some huge lumps of beef in a chilly bin. When it came to customs, he went to the red ‘something to declare’ lane…only to find that there was no one there! Sure, there’s the skull-and-crossbones signs and warnings that the punishment for smuggling illegal substances is compulsory death penalty, but was he phased? Not at all! After all, what on earth would anyone smuggle OUT of New Zealand??
Giddy with success, the seeds were sown for further adventures. So when my sister Christine arrived last week, she was fully armed with not one, but two enormous crayfish (or bugs, as we affectionately call them in the McIntyre clan). Hubby, Chris and I duly sat down to eat one for dinner, the other being safely stored in the freezer until we’re ready to face another mountain of cray again. Weighing in at 2.126 kilos, we three adults physically couldn’t eat the entire thing for dinner (and belive me, we tried), sowe enjoyed it for lunch the next day as well. Now that was one HUGE crayfish!
So this blog is a big thank you to my Dad, who not only went out to sea, donned a wetsuit and scuba gear in rather chilly weather and dived to the oceans depths to find these crayfish, but also took them home, boiled them in fresh seawater, froze them, carefully brought them to my sisters house in a polyestyrene foam box, and made sure they were personally freighted to my doorstep. A taste of my native paradise land in this adopted tropical oasis we now call home.
So this blog is a big thank you to my Dad, who not only went out to sea, donned a wetsuit and scuba gear in rather chilly weather and dived to the oceans depths to find these crayfish, but also took them home, boiled them in fresh seawater, froze them, carefully brought them to my sisters house in a polyestyrene foam box, and made sure they were personally freighted to my doorstep. A taste of my native paradise land in this adopted tropical oasis we now call home.
Frankly, life just doesn’t get any better than this.
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