Abalone Breaded In Macadamia Nuts

CopyRight @ 1998

This method of preparing Abalone is basically your traditional breaded, fried Abalone, but with a nice additional touch.

Slice and pound the Abalone steaks as described in "Abalone Preparation". Definitely put a bit of lemon juice on as you pile up the pieces after pounding.

For this recipe, you want to have milk, eggs, spiced bread crumbs, oregano, garlic (crushed or powder), lemon juice, butter and oil (vegetable and/or olive oil). It doesn't hurt to have some extra helping hands as well.

Get a cup or other container to mix oil and spices in. Put in about 1/2 cube butter, 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, 2 tablespoons olive oil, lots of garlic and oregano. Heat this in the nuke some to melt the butter and allow the spices to mix in some. This mix is made so that it is real conveniently available when your stove is as hot as you want it. This recipe is like all other Abalone dishes, only more so. You want to cook it really hot.

Mix up some milk and eggs like it was for scrambled eggs. Put the pounded Abalone steaks in this.

Use a chopper on the Macadamia Nuts to get them fairly fine, but don't worry about some bigger pieces. They go well after it is cooked.
Doris used browned almond pieces so that they would absorb less oil. That was good.

Pour some bread crumbs on a plate and put some of the chopped nuts on this. Take the Abalone from the egg mix and lay enough to cover the plate of nuts and bread crumbs. Now pour some nuts on top of the steaks and some bread crumbs on top of that. Press them so that they will stick better.

Move these to another plate. Put more Abalone from the eggs onto the bread and nut plate and cover again as before.

What you have done, is made as much of the preparation as possible before starting to cook. This is because with a hot pan and as quickly as Abalone cooks, things start to move really fast.

Get a good fry pan really hot. Put a couple of teaspoons of the oil and spice mix into the hot pan and follow it quickly with the breaded Abalone steaks. Pick up the pan and make the steaks slide around to evenly pick up some oil and heat. Spoon some of the oil and spice mix onto the uncooked side. Cook for about a minute on that side and flip them. Sprinkle some lemon juice on the cooked side. cook for no more than a minute on that side and take them out. It should be nicely browned on both sides. Pull out the nuts that have fallen off. They are really good too.

Now while the pan is still really hot, spoon in more of the spiced oil, and do it again.

Cooking hot, the Abalone should need no more than 1 minute per side. Over cooking will make it quite tough and it won't get tender again for a few minutes. Then it is over cooked and doesn't taste quite as good as it should.

Unfortunately, all the care in the world does not guarantee a tender meal. Abalone that is tenderized to softness, can toughen up again when cooked, but following these directions will usually produce "fork cutting" tender Abalone.

It may be Yuppie food, but it is sure good!