Kangaroo Island Yabbies in Butter, Garlic & Thyme

I’ve never seen live crustaceans travelling on public transport, but recently a radio caller recounted a train journey from the Blue Mountains to Sydney with dozens of yabbies swarming around his feet. A fellow passenger had experienced a rare haul this hot day and was keeping the catch in peak condition - in the wash basin of the toilet. Each lurch of the train liberated a portion of the yabbies, freeing them to roam around the carriage.

My most recent yabby spoils on Kangaroo Island were spared the ignominy of public transport on their final voyage, and the result suggests there's value in treating your lunch with dignity prior to its termination.

My vast overseas readership is possibly wondering what a yabby might be. Even Harold McGee devotes three pages to the yak and not a word on yabbies, so this is understandable. Stephanie Alexander tells us this native Australian freshwater crayfish is similar to the now rare French écrevisse, and the Louisiana Crawfish. Although unlike many American people and cars, she says crawfish are only about one third the size of our yabbies.

Yabbies can live in almost any body of fresh water, but particularly enjoy something muddy which allows them to burrow and hide, so it’s important to purge wild yabbies before eating them. I changed the rainwater twice over a day in the picture above. An ability to change colour, plus their resilience and willingness to eat any detritus makes yabbies a popular aquarium pet. And easy to snare.

My parents’ house on Kangaroo Island is perched atop a rock face staring directly at the Australian mainland. The house is high above the water, under battling Wedge-tailed and White-bellied Sea Eagles, with the yabby-filled dam about halfway up the twisting Sheoak lined driveway.

Although there’s not much sport in capturing yabbies, it is good fun and holds some sort of ye olde worldy appeal as something decent Aussie kids did during the Depression because they didn’t have iPhones. In the interests of supporting this legacy/fallacy I thought I’d expose the girls to a touch of pre-war glamour minus the beatings and malnutrition.

Stomping through lush green grass - generously fertilized by the neighbour’s uninvited cattle - I suffered some whingeing about the looseness of what was underfoot but solved this by furiously instructing everyone to have fun. I tied a stringy bit of beef in one yabby net and a still smoky frozen old ham bone in another. The yabbies can get in to get the bait, but are bamboozled by the complexities of exiting and remain trapped.

Returning later that day under clearer skies to check the spoils , it was clear the ham bone had proved most popular and the magnificent haul was moved securely from the dam to the house in the back of the ute; clawing ominously at the lidded aluminium pot.

For some time I'd wanted to dig a pit, build up some coals and bury a beast of some sort. I didn’t have a carcass to hand, so the yabbies were a trial run. I instructed my Dad to find a suitable spot and get to work.  Aesthetically speaking I wasn’t thrilled with his selected position next to some building debris, but on reflection, realised the benefits of the windbreak provided by the garden wall. There’s a good reason a wind farm is just a few kilometres across the sea.

It’s important to be upfront about the yabby. It’s not quite as racy as its crustacean cousins of the sea who can be so tasty just by being boiled and served with bread and mayonnaise. Sweet and delicate could be one description of the yabby, or bland if you’re inclined to be abusive. We’ve cooked a few things like ravioli with sauces which have swamped their subtle flavour so it’s best to keep it simple.

Bruschetta delivers a good mouthful of yabbies and means no fiddly shelling for the eater. I noticed my pregnant older sister  appeared idle and therefore the best candidate to shell the purged yabbies, which she did after a brief and humane plunging to make the job easier. We took the shelled article to the fire with this amazing butter:

125g softened unsalted butter

3 tablespoons thyme – plucked from the walled vegetable garden (above)

5 tablespoons of olive oil

4 finely minced garlic cloves

salt

Mash all ingredients together with a fork.

As soon as the infused butter hit the pan, the aroma of garlic, butter and thyme was lifted into the air and mingled with the smoke. As the yabbies had already effectively been cooked, and the pan was peaking at volcanic temperatures, they joined the butter for less than a minute and after a squeeze of lemon juice, were ready to pile onto oiled local bread I’d just managed to toast over the searing coals without losing all the skin on my hand. An old rainwater tank-stand provided a perfect serving table.

An Eden Valley Riesling, the setting, the fire, a handful of fresh ingredients and plenty of butter, turned something simple into something superb. As are most things which don't involve public transport.