The abalone season here in Perth runs for one hour on a Sunday morning over five weeks. Yep, there is limited opportunity to bag your catch. In previous years it has been a six week season - this year it has been reduced to five due to an increased number of licences.
I am always interested to read the news reports of the opening season, as invariably there are one or two who make the headlines with the excessive amount that they have attempted to exceed the quota!
I have been told that it is not worth trying to cheat as the guys from Fisheries are super keen and make sure that they check everyone as they leave the water. It is good that most people stick to the rules and it means that there will (hopefully) be abalone for us to enjoy in years to come!
To cook up abalone, you need to clean them up, cut off the digestive tract (or poo canal as my grandfather would have probably called it!) and slice them thinly. C then bashes them with a meat mallet until the muscle breaks. They can then be shallow fried quickly and eaten fresh. We like to coat them in a thin layer of flour and cracked pepper before they are fried, and squeeze lemon juice on them once they are cooked. Yummy!
