Last Sunday was spent at the Sydney Fish Market, learning how to prepare and cook some amazing seafood. The fact that I just put the words ‘amazing’ and ‘seafood’ in the same sentence shows how far I have come with my objection to seafood. Let me explain, ever since I was little I’ve never enjoyed seafood (except for fish fingers, I love love loved them until the day I realized they were fish fingers. I know, special child) and I partly think my parents are to blame because they didn’t like seafood either therefore it was never on the dinner menu. Anywho, over the last few years I’ve been trying to force myself into liking seafood, starting slowly with the easy stuff (although I made the horrible mistake of trying an oyster, didn’t know you were meant to kind of swallow it rather than chew chew chew, subsequently resulting in me dry reaching at a fancy birthday dinner, awkward) and working my way up. I’d say booking a seafood cooking class for my boyfriends birthday was definitely stepping it up a notch – my thoughts were ‘well at least this way I know I’m getting the best seafood and maybe once I cook with it I’ll start to like it more’. It sounds like I bought the present for myself more than for my boyfriend but I didn’t! He loves seafood, so my dislike for it has been a constant thorn in his be-hind. This was my attempt to jump start my fondness of the food of the sea. And you know what? It kind of sort of worked! Out of 5 dishes that we learnt to make and then had for lunch afterwards I actually enjoyed 2 of them! That’s HUGE. What’s even huge-er is that I want to cook these dishes at home and I keep thinking about them and how delicious they were. I know, I’m a changed woman.
The class we did (Seafood BBQ) at the Sydney Seafood School went from 11 – 3pm, and it was made up of 3 sections; demonstration, hands on, and lunch. It was an excellent class – the lady the led the demonstration was fantastic, and throughout the day was giving the most useful cooking tips (like did you know that eggshell attracts eggshell? So if you crack an egg and a bit of the shell drops into the bowl, get it out using the egg shell, not your fingers or a spoon – we all know how bloody frustrating that is). The instruction booklet was very detailed and provided thorough steps to the trickier things like preparing squid. The cooking part was fantastic, with big modern work benches to share between 5 or so people, and the room overlooked the auction part of the market. Unfortunately it was empty when we were there but I think it’d be an awesome experience to be able to watch it all happen. The only thing I thought was a bit of a disappointment was that each person didn’t get a chance to do everything e.g For Our bench had 2 squid, so only two people were able to practice prepping it.
We made 5 dishes - prawns, garfish, salmon, squid and mussels. I’m going to be re-creating some of them soon, so for the ones I do I’ll post the recipes.
If you ever have the chance to do a cooking class at the Sydney Fish Market I’d highly recommend it, especially to all of you other people that aren’t so friendly with the food from the sea, it’s an excellent place to start.
