This recipe is a classic and an all-time favourite of mine. Try to buy your seafood from the fishmongers or, if you live by the sea, direct from the boat. This is really so simple and perfect for a summer’s day. Enjoy it with a cold glass of riesling or a fruity rosé, soda bread and Irish butter. This dish really is a class act, like Bentley’s, and I can’t wait to be back up and open.
Richard Corrigan is chef proprietor at Bentley’s in London and Virginia Park Lodge in Co Cavan
PROPER SHELLFISH COCKTAIL
Serves four
Ingredients
A mixture of seafood; I picked white crab meat, Dublin Bay prawns, pink Atlantic prawns, cooked lobster tails and peeled brown shrimps
Extra virgin olive oil
Squeeze of lemon juice
2 baby gem lettuce
1 small cucumber, peeled, deseeded and diced
Cocktail sauce
2 parts mayonnaise
1 part tomato ketchup
Splash of brandy
Dash of Tabasco sauce
Pinch of paprika
Squeeze of lemon juice
Method
1 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 makes it less cloying.
2 Mix together all the ingredients for the sauce.
3 Take four old-fashioned cocktail glasses. Season all the seafood with a little extra virgin olive oil, salt and a drop of lemon juice.
4 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.
Kitchen Cabinet is a series of recipes from chefs who are members of Euro-Toques Ireland, who have come together during the coronavirus outbreak to share some of the easy, tasty things that they like to cook and eat at home #ChefsAtHome
