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Last Saturday, friends invited us to join them on a foodie road trip around Pomona and Kin Kin to visit a few local producers, who are part of the Cooloola Farm Food Trail.  Our first stop was the fresh water crayfish farm, Alba Aquaculture at Wolvi, near Kin Kin and on the Kin Kin–Gympie road, in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.  It was such a lovely drive through the hilly, quite green  countryside, some parts I had not been to before.  I was keen to see how these crayfish are farmed and harvested, plus we were buying some for our dinner that night back in Noosa.
In 1997, Andrew Gosbell left the Gold Coast and bought a ‘humble’, Andrew’s description, not mine, little 30-acre Farm in Wolvi with 3 established Olympic sized swimming pool ponds.  Now, 22 years later, his Alba Aquaculture Red Craw, chemical-free farm has 32 freshwater Crayfish ponds, 3 holding dams and 1 main dam, over the 4-hectare site.
This ‘red craw’ is a native freshwater North Queensland crayfish, and its delicate, sweet-tasting, flavoursome, crustacea flesh is sort after by some of Australia’s finest restaurants as well as foodie locals, who travel into the hinterland to buy it wholesale direct from the farm.  Which is what we were doing.

The mature crayfish are harvested when they reach about 30 – 50 grams in weight and are roughly 4 months old.  The harvesting is done by draining the ponds, before being graded and packed for transport. The breeding, six-month old females spawn about 800 eggs, twice annually.
The differences between yabbies and red claw, are their colour, habitat and diet; the yabbies are cannibals! whereas the red craw are omnivores.  The red craw hide from their predators in the ponds and have a red patch on the outer margins of the male claws. The female claws are smaller and remain blue in colour. The yabbies burrow into the sand to hide; they dark brown, nearly black in colour.
Their habitat in the pond are also different colours, with the freshest being blue/green, and as they age, the water colour goes from this blue/green to brown water indicating the craws are ready to be harvested.  Alba Aquaculture produces three to seven tonnes of live red craw crayfish a year, depending on seasonal conditions such as water temperature and day length. The crayfish are sent by air from the Sunshine Coast to the Sydney Fish Market weekly.
Farm-gate visitors are welcome all year from 9am-5pm, seven days a week at 1679 Pomona Kin Kin Road, Wolvi.  It is best to call beforehand to order your crayfish, so they can have it prepared and ready for you in their holding tanks.

To prepare and cook the red craws.
We all discussed the various options for cooking these little critters and decided on this; a very simple and pure way to allow the delicate flavours of the craws to shine:
We kept the craws in the freezer for 40 minutes; then we quickly immersed the freezer-ed craws in boiling water and removed immediately.  We then cleaned the craws, removed the head, legs and alimentary canal.  The shells we saved for crab stock. This left us with the body still in its shell, which we cut down the front in the middle, but not all the way through the outer shell to make it easier to remove the sweet and delicate flesh.  We marinated them in 6 garlic cloves, very finely diced, 2 eschallots, also very finely diced.  We added some extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper and melted butter and to half this marinade we added 1 finely diced chilli, In separate bowls, we tossed half the craws in each marinade until we were ready to cook them on the hot barbecue.
When ready to eat, we placed the craws, shell side down on the hotplate and cooked for 2 minutes, which we timed precisely.  Remove from the barbecue onto a serving platter; pour the marinade into a frying pan and cook over a medium flame until the garlic and eschallots are cooked and the sauce is bubbling.  You can either, pour this over the red craw meat and serve or serve the sauce separately on the side, for your guests to pour over their crayfish tails.
Another option, which we will do next time, is to remove the flesh from the tail meat completely, toss in the marinade; when ready to cook, cook the craw in some melted butter in your frying pan or on the barbecue for 1 or 2 minutes, until opaque and done.  Remove onto the serving platter; add the marinade to the pan and cook as above.  Cooking the marinade and serving with the red craws, allows more of the magical flavour of the marinade to come through the dish.
They were delicious, sweet, juicy and tender; how easy it that!  We served them with my garlic and saffron aïoli and a mixed green salad with spring onions, tiny tom tomatoes, avocado and mango.  A delicious, quick and easy dinner.