For me, one of the main problems with winter is the food. I like a bit of comfort food: a slow cooked shank, or a great casserole or a steaming bowl of miscellaneous carbohydrates. These things are all OK, but only OK. Winter foods for me are ultimately spiritually (and of course physically) heavy and a little monotonous. I always feel like my cooking goes into creative hibernation during these months and I really struggle for inspiration. With the coming of spring I re-emerge into the culinary light to rediscover my favourite things: galangal, lemongrass, coconut milk, lime & fish sauce dressings, crunchy sweet and sour salads, little things char grilled on sticks to be cooked on the deck on a hazy evening with a drink in hand. Lovely.

And of course, spring has a launch event: Father’s Day. The first weekend of the new season, traditionally celebrated with the giving of home-made presents and eating of home cooked food. Typically, the eating starts with the early morning force-feeding of luridly decorated biscuits brought home from kinder several days earlier, before moving on to some sort of curry – based breakfast doused in yoghurt, coriander and mango chutney (we had to skip this this year because Pete had to go to work). Pete lies on the couch for an hour as the kids incessantly wish him happy father’s day and then we drive around to mum and dad’s place, make some variety of intoxicating drink (this year it was mojitos) and I cook lunch for the four generations of my family that live in this little town.

The Father’s Day lunch is particularly fun. It’s for my dad and my children’s dad so I can cook South East Asian food with impunity because that’s what they (and I) both like. And it’s spring, wonderful spring, so food like this just seems right again. I marinated lovely green prawns in all the delicate fragrances of Thai food,  and barbecued them to be eaten wrapped in lettuce leaves with mint and coriander. A pungent pineapple salad dressed in shrimp paste and toasted coconut pounded into an oily paste was served on the side. And when you’re standing on the deck in the Otway spring sunshine listening to the ocean with a mojito under your belt cooking prawns, it sure as hell is a happy Father’s Day.

Galangal prawns

• 1kg green prawns, shelled
• 2 pieces of finely chopped lemongrass
• 2 tablespoons of finely minced fresh galangal (I buy fresh pieces at the Asian Grocer when I’m in Melbourne and keep them in the freezer – they grate up beautifully and you can just return the unused portions to the freezer)
• 4 shallots, roughly chopped
• 1 clove garlic, roughly chopped
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 2 teaspoons palm sugar
• Zest and juice of 1 lime
• 4 kaffir lime leaves, very finely sliced
• 4 coriander roots, roughly chopped
• 1 tablespoon vegetable or peanut oil
• 1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine or dry sherry

Blend all ingredients (other than the prawns) together to form a wet paste. It doesn’t need to be too smooth. Toss the prawns through the marinade and leave for at least 2 hours. Thread the prawns onto skewers and cook on the BBQ. I imagine these prawns would be just fine tossed in the wok, also. You can eat them as they are, but they are lovely wrapped in crunchy lettuce with mint, coriander and finely sliced red chillies.

The second option is to buy them precooked and then just simply not cook them again. Now personally I find the whole pre-cooked seafood served straight up thing quite confronting. It makes me think of those embarrassing occasions when people excitedly tell you they have a platter of prawns and then serve up a pile of things that were cooked at least a day or two earlier. They usually smell wrong, have an odd texture and come with something completely hideous such as Thousand Island Dressing. Nasty.

So anyway, it’s Chinese New Year and I always like to cook for my loved ones at this time. Crays are still relatively cheap down here, they’re a local product supporting local people and so it just seemed right. What to do? I completely fancied the idea of a classic Crayfish stir- fried with ginger and spring onion. I last had this dish at Flowerdrum, so fresh the flesh was practically still twitching. But you need  a live Cray which I didn’t want to get,  mainly because the other dish I was preparing was a complex double deep fried chicken dish and I needed the Cray to be something that could be put on the table with minimal fuss. Here is my solution (Gong Xi means congratulations, by the way…)

Gong Xi Crayfish

• 1 pre-cooked crayfish, halved length ways and cleaned. Larger crays have a sweeter, superior flavour
• Juice of half a lemon
• Teaspoon light soy sauce
• few drops sesame oil
• Two spring onions, finely sliced on the diagonal
• Knob of ginger, peeled, cut into thin strips and finely julienned
• 3 cloves crushed garlic
• 1 – 2 tablespoons of peanut oil. DO NOT be tempted to use any other sort of oil, especially olive oil  which will not tolerate high cooking temperatures.

Remove the crayfish from the shell and cut into bite sized pieces. Separate the tail part of the shell from the head part. Retain the tail and chuck the head (or preferably retain it to make stock). Marinade the flesh in the lemon juice, soy sauce and sesame oil for about half an hour. At serving time, pile the flesh back into the shells for presentation. Heat up the peanut oil in a small pan and heat until smoking hot. Drop in the ginger and spring onions, cook very briefly, then add the garlic. Once you’ve put the ginger and spring onion in, you don’t want to be waiting more than 30 seconds before pouring the hot oil over the Cray. Serve immediately. No problems with the kids eating this, by the way…

Palm sugar causes turns me into Hannibal Lecter, all tongue flicking and eye-rolling ecstacy. I love it in salads and stir frys. I love it in hot chocolate made with Balinese cocoa. I love making bujang dalam selimut (green pancakes with coconut and palm sugar filling). I love to mix it with grated lime rind and just eat it by the spoonful. And I love to use a cleaver shave off huge, crumbling sheets of the stuff for the sole purpose of letting it dissolve slowly on my tongue.

Got you interested? Now here’s a recipe for a simple, tasty but otherwise unremarkable family meal the best part of which is that you get to roll around in your palm sugar. This is just one of those throw-it-together-on-a- hot- night kind of meals: all wet and sweet and easy. It requires no real cooking skills, it won’t make you fat, it won’t break the bank and your kids will probably eat all or part of it. I dressed the salad before I added the herbs as my kids have been known to feel the need to scrape every bit of chopped mint and coriander off a salad. I then just put a herb-free portion aside for them. I also cooked some rice for them ( just to bulk it out a bit) but for myself I just had a pile of salad and calamari.

Coriander rubbed calamari with pineapple salad

For the calamari:

• 2 calamari hoods
• 2 teaspoons of finely chopped coriander roots and stalks
• 1 teaspoon grated palm sugar
• about half a teaspoon of salt
• splash of light soy sauce
• 4 cloves finely chopped garlic
• tablespoon of olive oil

Open up the calamari hoods and gently score them diagonally to make a criss-cross pattern then cut into strips. Pound all other ingredients with a mortar and pestle (or give them a quick blast in a processor, or just chop them vey finely). Rub this paste into the calamari strip and set aside. Just before cooking, slop the oil over it. When the salad is ready (see below), throw the calamari onto a hot griddle or BBQ, cook just a couple of minutes on each side. Not too long, or it will become tough.

For the salad:

• half a pinepple, quartered, peeled, cored and cut into bite sized pieces
• 2 carrots, julienned
• 4 green apples cut into thin slices
• 2 diced cucumbers
• splash of rice vinegar, splash of fish sauce, juice of 1 lime, 2 teaspoons grated palm sugar mixed together to make a dressing
• 1 tablespoon each of finely chopped mint and coriander leaves

Surely I don’t need to explain this? I mean, you just make a salad.

It’s unbelievably gorgeous down at Parker River and it was impossible not to go in the water for the first swim of the summer. Note to self – it may look like the tropics down there with its white beaches, clear seas and forests meeting the ocean but it’s not. It’s the Bass Strait and it’s damn cold. It’s a steep climb back up to the little campground at Parker Hill though (especially with 2 small children in tow),which at least works up the appetite. The plan for dinner was to fry up the prawns in salt and szechuan pepper (freshly toasted and ground before we left home) and to wrap them in tortillas with cucumber sticks, a squeeze of lime and handfuls of the fresh herbs purchased at the Asian grocer.

I suspect the fact that Pete and I lost sensation in our mouths indicates I may have gone a little heavy on the szechuan pepper but it was all good, clean fun. We had our first run at the rice paddy herbs: wierd, full on and a whole lot of kick. Their pungency  goes really nicely with the Thai basil.  All this was too full on for the kids. Heide had a bowl full of plain fried prawns (probably her favourite food) with her tortilla and salad and Alex (who doesn’t do prawns) had a tin of tuna instead.  This is kind of one of those ad-hoc, impressionistic dishes that I’ll never make the same way again and really is a camping dish for me. You could replace the szechuan/salt mix with chilli and garlic and add whatever herbs / greens you like. I would have loved some proper flaky roti and if I’d had it Iwould have rolled up the prawns and herbs and pan fried the whole package. My basic recipe, however, is below.

On Sunday we swam again at Blanket Bay and then just Pete and I on our own off the main beach at Apollo Bay. Bliss! I made a chicken stock while we were packing away the camping gear so dinner was a Cambodian fish and pineapple soup with steamed rice. Rice paddy herb again. Summer sure is coming.

Parker Hill Prawns

• Shelled green prawns
• Prickly Ash (toasted ground szechuan pepper and salt) or any other spice rub
• Sticks of cucumber
• Thai basil, Vietnemese mint and rice paddy herb or any other fresh Asian herbs
• Lime wedges
• Tortillas (or rotis)
• Cold Asahi beer

Warm through all your breads and set aside. Toss the prawns in the spice mix and fry quickly in a hot oiled pan. Roll the prawns, squeezed with lime, with cucumber and herbs up in the bread, crack open an Asahi and be happy.