Paua Fritters and Chorizo

A work colleague gave me a couple of paua (abalone) at work today. These are a large shellfish. The flesh is black and can be tough if not prepared and cooked correctly. These paua were in the sea yesterday. You used to be able to get a decent feed of paua in quite a few places around Wellington’s rocky coast but over the last few decades the number and size of paua has declined.

I came home and made some fritters for dinner. I sliced the paua thinly, and put the slices into a food processer. This minced the paua. If you do this, do not do it for too long, you do not want to end up with paua goo. This makes for a sloppy, very moist fritter. I added some cooked onion, flour, baking powder, and eggs to the minced paua. I mixed the mixture in the bowl and then cooked the fritters in a pan.

My fritter philosophy is to have a good ratio of fritter filling to fritter binding. The taste of the fritter filling must be the dominant flavour. My standard fritters are paua, corn or whitebait fritters. The key element is not to use too much flour. No recipe is used, I do it by feel and look.

So the paua fritters were cooked and eaten by an appreciative family. As I only had two paua to make fritters from, it made nine fritters. I also served some Sremska, see link, or chorizo criollo, see link. The family made appreciative comments about both the fritters and sausages.

A nice dinner ‘snack’. Thanks to the work colleague for the unexpected treat.