Proper shellfish cocktail

Alan Barrins

Alan Barrins

18th March 2015
Alan Barrins

Proper shellfish cocktail

Proper shellfish cocktail by Alan Barrins - serves 4

Ingredients

  • A mixture of seafood:
  • Picked white crab meat
  • Dublin Bay prawns
  • Atlantic prawns, the pink ones
  • Cooked lobster tails
  • Brown shrimps, peeled
  • Extra virgin olive oil
  • A squeeze of lemon juice
  • 2 baby gem lettuce
  • 1 small cucumber, peeled, deseeded and diced
  • Cocktail sauce:
  • 2 parts mayonnaise
  • 1 part tomato ketchup
  • A splash of brandy
  • A dash of Tabasco sauce
  • A pinch of paprika
  • A squeeze of lemon juice

Method

The quantities of seafood you use are up to you: just try to get a good mix of everything.

How much sauce you make is really up to you, too.

Keep tasting it, and adjust it until it makes you smile.

Simon Hopkinson had a nice idea of mixing a little cottage cheese into a cocktail sauce; it lightens it up a bit and takes that cloyiness off it, which part of you dislikes, but you just know that no one has ever come up with anything as good.

Mix together all the ingredients for the sauce.

Take four old-fashioned cocktail glasses.

Season all the seafood with a little extra virgin olive oil, salt and a drop of lemon juice.

To assemble, put some lettuce and cucumber at the bottom of the glass, which will give a lovely crunch, then layer up your seafood, put a dollop of sauce on top and let people mix everything up, or keep everything separate, as they choose.

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