Quail Pancakes, Yabbie Gnocchi, Chocolate and Raspberry Cake = Another successful Cookup Part 2

Ok ... After a harried voicemail message from P about the glucose syrup, and his subsequent arrival at the house, we got stuck into preparing the dough for the Chocolate and Raspberry tart. We wanted it done so that it could rest while we finished off the rest of the shopping.

After our trip down to the shops we came back with our most exciting acquisition to date - a bag filled with squirming yabbies ... and our heads filled with thoughts on how best to cook them humanely. I wanted to follow the recipe to the letter - 10 seconds in boiling water and then straight into ice-cold - peel shells - finish off cooking in the sauce. But the others went all RSPCA on me ... and our eventual compromise took it a little beyond where it should have been.

P continued with the crust of his tart as it needed a fair amount of cooling and setting time. He also concentrated on the filling in order to get that out of the way as it would have to be all hands on deck for the Mandarin  pancakes.

M started on the pastry for this and I continued working on both the salad and noodle accompaniment for the pancakes as well as prepping for the stock that would contribute to the Yabbie sauce for the Gnocchi.

Meanwhile lubricating proceedings was M's tipple du jour which is Zinfandel (Don Nicola Zinfandel 2007). I think its an excellent quaffing wine - quite light on the pallate. And doesn't cost an arm and a leg and would most definitely have James May's stamp of approval.

Pretty soon it was time to put the yabbies to rest. We were going to split the diff and go a full 30 secs, but P reckons we went well over a minute. When I eventually peeled the shells off, some of them were cooked right through, others were still quite transluscent in the body. I set aside the flesh for later and use the shells along with a few other bits of veg and herbs for the stock.

M began ricing the potatoes for the gnocchi, and after the resultant mash had cooled down, he commenced adding flour and rolling the pastry out to form little balls for the gnocchi.

I began frying off the quail in the griddle and cooking some vermicelli for the cucumber and herb salad. Before long it was time to turn our attention to the Mandarin pancakes ... which will be in the next post!!!