Xmas Crayfish

My son and his girlfriend got me a crayfish for Christmas.

A full sized, good sized, crayfish. Complete with legs and horns.

In order to do this my son had to instruct his anti-fish-smell girlfriend to go to an actual specialised fish shop in Midland. This was a pretty tough assignment as I am the only one in my household that eats fish. The girlfriend said she basically had to hold her breath most of the time while she conducted the transaction.

Okay, it didn’t have ALL its legs. There were four missing. But the point is that if you buy a ‘whole’ crayfish from the supermarkets you generally don’t get the horns and legs. Also the crayfish is generally only just legal size which means they are about two thirds of the size of the crayfish I got for Xmas.

So tonight I got it ready for eating.

I did this while my wife was napping—so she would not be put through the torture of having to smell it. And the girlfriend was in her room with the door closed. So I got no complaints about the smell while I was preparing it. I took all the rubbish directly out to the wheely bin outside and (as far as I know) our rubbish pick-up is tomorrow.

So here is what I ended up with. How good does that look?

I didn’t do anything complex to go with it. I had it just how I used to have it with my mum and dad on the front veranda of our house in Morawa—so many, many, years ago. Just some pepper, brown malt vinegar, relatively fresh bread, and some salad. Oh! And the the crayfish.

I was out of my recent favourite alcoholic beverage, which is Jacob’s Creek Chardonnay Pinot Noir Brut Cuveé, so I zoomed down to LiquorLand to pick up a couple of bottles of that before woofing into my crayfish delight.

Just me by myself at the table; so there were no complaints about the smell, or comments of “How can you eat that?”.

Dipping in the vinegar, then dusting with pepper, then in the mouth. Followed by some lettuce or cucumber or onion or capsicum from the salad (left over from the night before). Then maybe a sip or two of Chardonnay.

Seriously, without a word of lie, it brought tears to my eyes. Thinking of mum and dad in Morawa (both departed now), and me at about 15 or 16, sitting around this little table on the front wooden veranda on a stinking hot day (we only had ‘stinking hot days’ in summer in Morawa).

Dad, who ran a very General Store in Morawa, would have got the crayfish from someone who had brought it into the shop for him from Dongara.

Here it is after I had eaten the tails.

From left to right: a bowl of water to clean the fingers in (should that be required); my Leatherman pliers to crack the horns with (back at home in Morawa we just used fencing pliers or a hammer); pepper shaker; bottle of ‘fake’ champagne; the plate with the tails now having been consumed; my glass of ‘fake’ champagne'; a bowl with the malt vinegar; the bottle of malt vinegar; and the left over salad from last night.

The crayfish meat was sweat and firm. I am getting misty eyes again now just keying this up.