Peter's Fish Market

Many moons ago, LGS and I went to the Spit with our dogs and afterwards, we ended up at Peter's Fish Market after a long day of trying to persuade my cowardly dog to enter the surf. We took some great photos and videos of that day but its full of crappy audio so its never seeing the light of day.

The look on her face and her body language spells:
I hate water.

I went again with my friend, Jubi, once she got her green P plates and we went to the beach. It was one of the first really hot days of spring this year and it was an absolutely gorgeous day. It was so bright I couldn't see my phone screen for trying haha.

Clear blue skies

The Spit!

We walked up and down this beach for 3 hours

Ohhh she's so fluffy!

We spent some time trying to find a place to go to afterwards that was dog friendly. Its pretty retarded to leave your dog in a car while you get lunch and we didn't know the area at all, so we went back to Pete's Fish Market after all, since I remember its right near the Spit and there were dogs everywhere.

Pete's Fish Market is a really open little spot, and to me looks like a trailer park opened up and started to sell stuff. Its right on the top of the local Fisherman's Co-Op but it seems to carry a lot of internationally caught fish. Its always packed whenever I've been, no matter the time of the day. The service is really brisk and to the point, but they're always swamped and its a fish and chip shop so I didn't really expect any better. Its full of locals, tourists and their dogs and there's an extensive seating area of shaded tables to sit at and they call out your docket number when your order is ready.

On the inside, there are four large displays of frozen/fresh fish for self service. You can pick your own fish to be battered or crumbed as part of your meal, but they price it by weight as well as an additional cooking fee of xxx/100g.

There is also this really creepy boat on top of one of the displays.

So creepy.

There's an area around the front that is just full of salads, fish products like dips and caviar as well as condiments for fish. The lady manning this area seems to stock all the available fish displays and the drinks as well.

This is a very distinct look but I can't describe it

Just below this sign, is where you actually order. There's also a large display to the right of it with fancier options than your standard fish and chips. Things like marinated fish or prawn skewers, lobster mornay, scallops and a whole selection of dodgy looking salads.

All the specials!

Salads!

Fancy stuff!

More fancy stuff

On the day we went, Jubi persuaded me to split a lemongrass snapper as well as a side of salad for each of us, cause she's on a mega health kick and lost crazy amounts of weight. I, only the other hand hadn't tried any of the marinated options and was also feeling motivated to lose weight. The lemongrass snapper was really fresh, well cooked and perfectly seasoned, we didn't even touch the lemon wedge that went with it. It was a huge piece and we just finished it between the two of us.

The Arizona Lemon Black Tea I had originally picked had expired several months ago, and I didn't even realise until I had almost all of it. The lady at the front of the shop apologised profusely and got me another drink, which was handy cause I was still thirsty. I didn't get sick from it thankfully.

I picked the seafood salad, thinking for some reason that since it was a fish and chip shop with such a huge selection of seafood, the seafood salad would have seafood extenders, celery and mayonnaise. I was wrong. That's all it had. I was a bit disgusted and immensely regretted my choice. The huge amounts of mayo made it sickly sweet, the celery was over powering and I got onion breath from the large chunks of green onion.

Really gross

Jubi got the Greek salad, and who cares because everyone has had Greek salad. Her tomatoes looked a bit watery but she thought it was quite good.

Average

Here is the picture of one of the specials with dodgy frozen fish, chicken salt chips and calamari rings. Delicious, unhealthy, greasy and delicious once again.

Delicious

Peter's Fish Market:
Atmosphere: 7. Solid local fish and chip place, packed, high turnover, cheap and efficient.
Service: 4. They take my order and that's about it. That one lady got an 8 for actually apologising and replacing dodgy drink
Food: 5 - solid fish and chips. I've had better and Swampdog is much closer and much higher quality.

Midnight Madness and Salt and Pepper squid

Making and eating tasty food at work is difficult. You lack all your pantry staples, basic cooking equipment, utensils and finding the time to even do that is a monumental task within itself. With that being said, my profession encourages versatility, problem solving and creativeness, so its not surprising that we found a way to make food whilst at work.

Using a sandwich press that we carefully scrubbed clean enough to be sterile, we turned out this:

See below

Toasted garlic turkish bread. Fried haloumi from Olympus Cheeses. Lime from my dad's house and a pot of Black Swan hummus.

Super speedy L. nabbing some haloumi

And that was it. Let's not kid ourselves here, the fact that we pulled it off was a monumental task in itself.

Oh yeah and these crispbreads were tasty too

One of my many plates.
Its a very small plate honest!

Rumour abounds that one of our sister workplaces has an actual toasted sandwich maker that is used to make waffles, pancakes, pikelets, cook bacon and every sort of egg dish under the sun. So immensely jealous.

Oh for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about. A sandwich press just tends to have two flat plates to press against, and once heated up, cook really fast. The closer you are to the middle and the back of the plates, the faster your, usually bread, will cook since of the way the hinges are at the back. I also find bread tends to get squished in a wedge shape due to this, you can press down to make it more even though or even tie it down. The top plate tends to be quite heavy, so bread may end up being very flat.

Sandwich press

On the other hand, a toasted sandwich maker, has marked depressions to separate your sandwich into two distinct halves. Most toasted sandwich makers have too small a depression, or too small a section for anything besides stock standard bread, so expect cheese to ooze out, or your toasted sandwich maker to be unable to close if you put too much in. Its also the best cooking equipment for a uni student to have. TOAST EVERYTHING. The secret to magic with both is to butter the sides when you are toasting.

Toasted sandwich maker

H. and Mr M for Megababe insisted that I leave my haloumi and turkish bread behind so they could eat the rest of it at work. Why did I listen to them? Mr M for Megababe is even bringing in mornay oysters left over from his man date to work! They insisted I come in and share, but I respectfully declined. Its okay though I have salt and pepper squid for breakfast now that I've stolen a capsicum from VGirl's fridge!

Salt and Pepper Squid

Uses: Beer food. Snack food. Its not real food. Diet prevention.

Ingredients:
300-500g cleaned, squid tubes cut into rings. Or cleaned squids chopped into bits. Mmm tentacles.
125g of self raising flour
125g of tapioca starch. Possibly sub in rice flour or cornstarch
1 small red capsicum, cut into squares
1 small green capsicum, cut into squares
1 large onion, cut into square and separated layer by layer
3+ cloves of diced garlic
Lots of vegetable oil
Salt
Black Pepper

Assorted junk:
Colanders
Large dishes
Assorted large bowls
Scooping thing
Something to stir quickly with

Instructions:
1. Shove your squid into a small amount of water. Add about a tablespoon of salt and pepper into the mixture while you get things ready. This will allow everything to soak in

So attractive

2. Sift your flour and leave aside.

All my spices live in old gumball containers.

3. Cut your capsicums into smallish squares. Do this by slicing down the middle, removing seeds and those weird yellow bits. Cut this half into another half. Cut down in 1cm stripes and start getting your squares.
4. Dice all your garlic
5. Cut your onion into half. Remove that weird spindly bit in the middle, it was not meant to be square. Cut your onion into squarish bits, you might have to do this at an angle. Separate all the square bits of onion into layers.

Coreless onion.

Like this!

Beautiful.

6. Dunk your squid into the flour. Before frying, try and shake off all the excess flour.

Still disgusting.

7. Pour oil into a large pot. Put onto medium heat and begin frying the squid off in small batches, making sure not to overcrowd the pot. Turn off the heat, and pour into a colander, this catches all the gross bits of flour which will no doubt burn and taint the rest of the squid. Pour oil back in and repeat until all the squid is cooked.

Tasty.

Look at that oil @_@

8. Saute the garlic with some oil in another pan until light golden brown. Immediately remove off heat and throw the garlic on the cooked golden squid rings. Wipe down the pan and remove all garlic

GARLICCCCCCC

9. Saute the onion until fragrant.

ONIONS

10. Throw in the capsicum and stir briefly until they are combined.
11. Throw in your squid and garlic bits. Stir probably twice and remove. Don't leave it for too long otherwise the heat and moisture from the onions/capsicum will soften the crunchy batter.

My god, its beautiful.

12. Carefully remove all squid first and arrange in a pretty circle. Shove remaining garlic, onion and capsicum mix on top.

Shishi and I are organising a dinner out in the nearby future. Hurray for enabling behaviour! Let's go to all the cool food places in Brisbane!