Lobster Rolls Over the Campfire - Catch & Cook

Morning start for us. We're going to go into the rocks out here. Lockie's just suited up. He's ready to go on a kina hunt. Kina, otherwise known as sea urchin, are a big delicacy here in New Zealand. I grew up with my grandfather loving them. Our whole family actually. My mum is a fiend on them. So they're the spiky little shells. And you crack them open and inside eat the little tongues. Either raw or you can cook them. But I've always known them to be best eaten raw. And I'm pretty certain that the girls are going to love them. Dad's going to go on a little mission. See if he can find some. Which I'm pretty sure you should. These rocks look pretty good for it. Pretty good. Yeah. Get out there. Good luck. Alright. This is the kina. There's heaps of stuff out there. There's beautiful big butterfish. A couple of little crayfish. But this is what we're after. I've got about four of these guys. Such a good size. It's a nice one. There's a lot of little ones out there but that's a good one. Crack him open. Let's eat him. Want to open him? So we're going to use the double spoon method to open it. I'm going to use a knife. Some people crack them open in different ways. But we've got spoons in the combi so we'll use them. So good. It's like beautiful Thai style. Is it? Okay, I'm just going to give you some. Alright. Let's try it. Really good. Beautiful. I have to tell you again. Alright, we're on our way to check the pots. Hopefully we've got a couple of crayfish in there. What do you reckon? Yeah? You reckon we're going to get some? Yeah! One in each pot is what pot I reckon. Alright, wish us luck. Yep. Got it? Got it. Hold it. Alright, so in my cookbook there are a few recipes that you will discover for crayfish. That's because it's one of my favourite crustaceans. Well, my favourite crustacean. And also I grew up with a lot of it as a kid here in New Zealand. My grandfather's favourite thing to go out and get was crayfish. So we had it quite often. We're very, very blessed. And now we're in Kaikoura and this place here is also very famous for crayfish. If you are lucky enough to get your hands on some like us today. It is a bit difficult at times but we have some craypots in our little boat. Which gave us a bit of an advantage to get out a little bit deeper. And Lockie came back with two. Two decent sized crays. And today we're going to make lobster rolls. Otherwise known as crayfish rolls if you're here in New Zealand. I really like them. The kids really like them. And they're just great for a beach cook-up. They're really simple to make. And I'm just literally going to cook them over a grate over the fire. And then we're going to stuff them into some little buns and sit here and watch the sun set. And it's going to be a beautiful night. Our crayfish has all been cut up and cleaned. And they are good to go. So our bed of coals needs to be laid. Which is what I'm going to just start to harvest out of here now. Get a decent amount of coals. We kind of want to do this hot and heavy. Like a medium to high heat is what we're looking for. So once again just using my trusty grate from Osry. This is just so easy to carry, easy to use, easy to cook on. You can kind of control the temperature. Move the grate up and down just by pressing it into the sand or stones. Just find it's easy to move once you're underneath. It's just, yeah, brilliant. Right, we're going to make a little sauce. Well, a butter. Just going to melt a whole heap of butter. And that's going to baste our crayfish while we're putting it over the grate. Around, I reckon, 100 grams of butter. Yep. I reckon a little bit more. Get that melting away. And it's just going to keep the crayfish really nice and moist while it's over the coals. Otherwise it might just dry out a little bit too much. Heap of garlic, up to you how much. I'm going to go with, what's that, six. Just going to let that melt right down. In the meantime I'm going to get Lockie to throw me a beer. Alright, so just to test how hot your coals are or a guesstimate of temperature, if you can hold your hand, a beer can above your grate. One, two, three, four, five. We're medium to high heat. It's perfect for this. We've got our butter melting there. We're going to chuck our garlic in and then we'll start with our crays. So cooking crays, we obviously don't want to put them flesh down. They're just going to stick and it's going to get all hard to get the meat out and sticky and yucky and we're going to lose all our delicious meat. So we're just going to stick them straight with their shell. Facing down, one down. Now, the inside row around the head. It's my grandfather's favourite part and my mum's. It's known as mustard. People use it in sauces and creams to flavour things or just to simply eat. So you can do that. Definitely don't discard it. On they go. While they do their thing, we're going to make a sauce to go into the buns and I might also just pop some chives into the butter as well to give some extra. Don't worry about putting too much in because we are going to put them in the dressing as well. It's going to go in the butter. There's one. Get lots of garlic in there. They'll fall into the crevices and flavour the crayfish nicely. We're just going to sit here and do this for about 15 to 25 minutes depending on how big your crayfish is. But these guys, they shouldn't take too long. Got nice hot coals. We'll sit and wait. Okay, so we've started to build like a little bit of a crust around the side. You can sort of see the crayfish starting to change colour. It's got a nice smokiness to it now. And just to finish it off to make sure that all that centrepiece of meat is cooked through, I'm just going to layer on the last bit of butter. So on that goes. And then you can either use the base of a camp oven. I'm just using the other side of my multi-cooker. And we're just going to smudge them all under there. And let them sort of steam away. We're going to put our lemons on. And we're going to char them, get them nice and hot. And we can get all the juice out so we can make our sauce to go over the top. Which is really simple. It's literally just going to be chives, kewpie and lemon. Kewpie, Japanese mayonnaise. Nothing like it. It's just the best. I'm happy with that. So we're going to use hot dog buns today. Because we're in a little tiny town and we can't get our hands on brioche buns. They work the same way and they're just as good. A little trick for when you are making these types of rolls or stuffing hot dog rolls. Make a wedge. And then that way your filling sits in there. Perfectly. Come on. So we've pulled the lid off and how we can check that they are ready. Just giving them a firm poke. You can feel how firm the meat is now. Make sure you just check all sides and see that it's cooked thoroughly through. An even colour. It looks juicy and very good. Let's dish up. I left my little dog in your hands. It's alright, I know you take care of the dog. Good job. Please be with me baby. Yeah. Will you please forgive me? I know it's hard to keep a love from the fire. Yeah, one for daddy. Hi daddy. Well thank you sweetheart. You're welcome.