Whole Crispy Fish Recipe

This Spirit House signature dish is one of the easiest to make – as long as you’re not scared of a wok of boiling oil or you have a large deep fryer.

The Tamarind Chilli Sauce

The easy way …
You can take the easy way out and head to an IGA and buy a bottle of Spirit House Tamarind Chilli Sauce. Here’s the method: open bottle, pour 100ml or so into a saucepan and heat. For a strong flavour, boil sauce for a few minutes to reduce the sauce down a tad.

… If that was too easy, you can do it the hard way and make your own sauce …
Make your own tamarind chilli sauce
4 tablespoons chopped garlic
4 red chillies, finely chopped, deseeded
2 golden or red shallots, sliced
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh or
pickled galangal
1 tablespoon finely chopped coriander root or stem
10 white peppercorns
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons palm sugar
half cup tamarind water
coriander or Thai sweet basil to garnish

method:
in mortar, pound white peppercorns, add garlic, shallots, galangal, coriander root – pound to coarse paste.
Heat 2 tablespoons oil in wok and stir fry the paste and chillies until fragrant – about 2 minutes. Add fish sauce, palm sugar, tamarind water. The sauce should be sweet, tangy and salty and should be quite thick. If too dry, moisten with a few tablespoons water. Simmer this sauce for a few minutes for the flavours to come together. Remove sauce from wok, keep warm.

Cooking The Fish

1 whole fish, weighing about 500 gms -cleaned, scaled, gutted & gilled
plain flour to coat fish
4 cups vegetable oil for deep frying

Method
Score both sides of the fish diagonally with a sharp knife. This opens the flesh making it quicker to cook and easier to eat.

In a Wok, make sure oil is sizzling hot by testing with a piece of garlic. Slide fish gently into oil, head first. Using wok flipper, spoon oil over the top of the fish while cooking. This will take about
10 minutes. Carefully turn the fish over, fry on the second side for about 5 minutes. Carefully lift out, drain on paper towel.

Transfer to serving platter, spread apart the gill area just behind the head, this will make it easy for the fish to stand upright on the plate spoon over sauce and garnish with coriander leaves or basil.

National tourism award winner

We can’t begin to tell you how excited we are to win the Australian Tourism Award for ‘Best Tourism Restaurant’. This has been a major achievement for us and finally we hope the local council will realise that we’re more than just a restaurant… we’re actually a reason to visit the Sunshine Coast. The real test will be if this is enough for us to get a SIGN for people to be able to find us.

Our very own superwoman

Katrina, our cooking school chef, was recently interviewed by Superwoman.com.au to talk about Seachange lifestyles. Few people know that Katrina and her Husband, Mark, were successful restrateurs themselves back in Sydney. Katrina has been personal chef to Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman and worked with Neil Perry at Rockpool… to find out how and why she gave all this up, read her interview:No going back – Superwoman

We win the tourism awards so maybe NOW we can get a sign

You read it here first, that is if you’re reading this at 11.25pm on Friday night, we have won the Queensland tourism awards for best tourism restaurant. I’m not saying that to blow our own horn but simply to point out how ridiculous it has been trying to get a bloody sign on the road pointing to the Spirit House, let me explain:

Local council have threatened, cajoled and bullied us for years about signage and it doesn’t matter how many shows like ‘Getaway’, ‘The Great Outdoors’,'The Great South East’, or any other TV shows that feature us, council won’t let us have a sign because they say we’re not a tourist attraction – But Queensland Tourism now says we are.

The first thing we do on Monday is ask council to put one of those groovy brown and white signs up… which is going to save hundreds of guests wandering into hillbilly country never to be heard from again… except for the wafting sounds of banjo music, cries of Yeeehaaaaw, and ‘Boy, you sure do got a pretty mouth’.

water wastage propoganda

I have a friend who works for the government on our water shortage problem. It turns out that only 8% of water consuption is for domestic use… 92% of our water is consumed by industry. It seems to me that taking shorter showers or drinking recycled waste water isn’t really an answer and just a ploy to get politicians elected and boost ratings for tv news. Water is used in the weirdest ways.

My friend was telling me it takes tens of thousands of litres of water to make a car and coal mining consumes heaps of water. In fact one crisis we face is getting water to our coal mines as the drought takes hold, because without water then coal production stops. Restaurants use heaps of water too… that’s why we have installed new caroma toilets – the basin is on top of the cistern, when you flush, the tap flows allowing you to wash your hands and the waste water drains into the cistern ready for the next flush.

buy your tarantino knife block

When I blogged about this cool knife block it was just a prototype… well they’re now in production and we have 5 sets coming this week. They also include the full set of knives that you see in the picture. For safety I’m told that the knives actually have a clear plastic cover over each blade but you can remove that and get that real Quentin Tarantino knife-block look.

At $155, the price is not too bad when you consider that you get a set of knives with this funky knife block. Now available in the Cooking School shop.

Katrina’s recipes from TVs ‘Escape with ET’

Katrina, one of our cooking school chefs, does a weekly cooking segment for the Spirit House on ‘Escape with ET’ which shows on channel 9. I found the recipes for each episode on ETs website and because it’s a fishing show, they’re all to do with fish. All these recipes are for the BBQ and are quick and easy. Here are just some of the recipes she’s presented on TV:
BARBECUED SPANISH MACKEREL WITH GRILLED TOMATOES AND AVOCADO SALSA
GRILLED FISH BURGER WITH SAMSON FISH
SPANISH MACKEREL WITH FRESH TOMATO AND ANCHOVY BUTTER
MOROCCAN SALAD OF BARBECUED NANNYGAI
MAHI MAHI WITH TOMATO AND CHICKPEA SAUCE
CHINESE STEAMED PEARL PERCH WITH GINGER AND SHALLOT
PARMESAN CRUMBED TREVALLY ‘FISH FINGERS’
PEPPER CRUSTED TUNA WITH AVOCADO AND PICKLED GINGER

The reason why the fish is always on the menu

Fran Boyd emailed us the picture above to explain that she sent it to some friends of hers and, being fish-lovers I guess, they were so impressed that they made a booking to the restaurant. Interestingly the crispy fish in the photo has been on the menu since day one… and with good reason: people talk about it. More interesting than that is it’s the easiest dish to make: especially when you use the Spirit House Tamarind-Chilli Sauce which is available from your nearest Spirit House stockist.

Spirit house Cookbook in London

Deb was in London and found our humble cookbook in Books Etc. in Shepherd’s Bush. Other clients have found our book on sale in Bangkok as well.Spirit house Cookbook