Taste: Let’s scale the heights

ELAINE REEVES: Cooking fish can be easy with Eloise Emmett and her generations of knowledge to guide you

Seafood writer Eloise Emmett, of Hobart, has written the new book Seafood Everyday. Picture: KIM EISZELE

ELOISE Emmett is eminently qualified to write about cooking seafood. Her grandfather was a fisherman, as were seven of his eight sons, including her father Charlie Baker, and she is the wife of a fisherman.

She has a comfortable familiarity with the ingredient that can cause otherwise confident cooks to falter.

Eloise was chef at Hobart’s T42 before moving to the Tasman Peninsula 15 years ago, where she was the owner-operator of the well-reviewed The Mussel Boys restaurant at Taranna for seven years.

Macadamia-crusted fish, which was never off the T42 menu during her tenure, is in her new book Seafood Everyday, this time with wasabi potato mash and a beetroot and lime chutney.

And a dish that never left the Mussel Boys menu is also there — mussels with homemade fettuccine, prosciutto and capers.

But while providing the dinner party star turns, the main thrust of the book is to address families who avoid eating fish because of the expense or the perceived difficulty of cooking it.

The book includes five knockout recipes for crayfish “because I will only be writing one seafood book”, but now that Eloise is cooking every night for children aged eight, five and two, dinner is more likely to be family salmon casserole, which can be made with fresh, smoked or tinned salmon, and is included in the section of the book on pantry staples.

In the section on economical fish meals are recipes for chowder, laksa, lasagne, fish pie, risotto and more, that do not specify the type of white fish to buy. Eloise says there is no need to use expensive fish when there are “a lot of flavours happening anyway”.

When she was running The Mussel Boys, fishermen would arrive on her doorstep with baskets of fish. This is rather a matter of who you know and also of being able and prepared to gut and fillet fish yourself.

But she allows that it can be difficult for those without contacts to buy the cheaper fish; a chicken-and-egg situation of shoppers not buying the unfamiliar, at the same time
as fishmongers not wanting to stock fish customers won’t buy.

Of the cheaper fish Eloise mentions, I’ve seen only trevally commonly available. She also mentions elephant fish, Australian salmon and bay trumpeter, none of which is strongly flavoured. We need to ask for them if they are to become available.

When away fishing, Brendan Emmett is mostly looking for wrasse and carp, which are flown live to Asian restaurants in Melbourne and sold from tanks. The other fish is mostly sold to Dunalley Fish Market.

Eloise Emmett's new book Seafood Everyday.

Seafood Everyday also has sections on shellfish (eight clever ways with oysters), squid and octopus and the premium species.

Eloise works from home developing recipes for food brands and websites, including her own. This year she has also been studying photography at TAFE a couple of days a week.

As with her book last year Real Food for Kids, Eloise has published this one herself, styled the food and photographed it, and taken the location shots.

She is proudest of the cover picture, which looks like dinner at the seaside at sunset. In fact, the sun does not set, but rises over the Tessellated Pavement at Eaglehawk Neck. With admirable perseverance Eloise had made three different excursions before she was satisfied with the picture.

The picture was picked up on social media by state and national tourism, to eventually receive more than 80,0000 “likes”.

Seafood Everyday will be launched at The Founders Room at Salamanca Arts Centre on November 26 at 5.30pm.

Then at 7.30pm, at the same venue, a long-table dinner will be served. The menu, subject only to what is fresh and available on the day, features dishes from the book, including creamy seafood chowder; oysters with tomato, Tabasco and vodka; macadamia crusted fish; mussels with fettuccine, prosciutto and capers; and desserts and cheese.

The dinner costs $80, which includes a copy of the book.

Bangor Vineyard will provide the bar. To book for the dinner go to eloiseemmett.com, and then to “buy my cookbook”. To RSVP for the launch contact [e-mail].

From November 25-27 there is an exhibition of Eloise’s photographs in the Founders Room, with book sales from 10am to 3pm.

Seafood Everyday costs $34.95 (rrp), but until the launch can be ordered from eloiseemmett.com for $29.

Originally published as Taste: Let’s scale the heights