Aotearoa & Maori · Starter
Pāua Fritters
- Advanced
- 30 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light.
Ingredients
- 3 pāua, about 500 g of foot once shucked
- 2 eggs
- 60 g plain flour
- 1 small onion, very finely diced
- 2 tbsp milk
- 5 g salt
- black pepper
- coarse salt, for scrubbing
- neutral oil, for frying
- 1 lemon
The skills inside
Shucking shellfishSautéing & the shallow fry
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg · shellfish
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Run a blunt knife under the foot at the wide end to lift it off the shell, cut away the gut and the hard mouth, then scrub the foot with coarse salt until the slime is gone and the black skirt is clean.
- Beat each foot with a mallet until it goes from rubber firm to slack and floppy and the edges frill; you are tearing the sheets of connective tissue that run through the muscle.
- Mince the beaten foot coarsely by knife or mincer, stopping well short of paste.
- Stir through the egg, flour, milk, onion, salt and pepper to a batter that only just coats the meat.
- Fry spoonfuls in a very hot thin film of oil for about 45 seconds a side, until the edges are set and lacquered brown, and lift them out on the early side; lemon over.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Sautéing & the shallow fry 80 recipes
- Everything sits in a single layer with visible space between the pieces: nothing stacked, nothing touching, or the pan is too small for the quantity.
- The pieces move freely and keep moving, sliding across the pan rather than sticking and tearing when the pan is worked.
- Light even browning arrived at quickly: colour on most faces, not the deep crust of a sear and not grey.
- A thin film of fat with the food glossed by it: no pool left in the pan at the end, and nothing greasy on the fingers or the plate.
- Cooked through but still firm, having spent only a few minutes in the pan: anything that has gone soft has been in there too long.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, the pan cooled, and the food released its water: what was meant to brown in three minutes stews for ten and comes out grey, slack and wet.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Champagne: when lost, bubbles
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais, lightly chilled
- From the Taps
- Pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus
The universal donors: acid, bubbles, and low tannin rescue nearly any plate: the sommelier’s honest safety net.
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