![]() ![]() It should be finely diced and deseeded, but there's no need to peel it, as Bareham and Hopkinson insist – the skin provides a pleasing flash of colour. While we're talking crunch, Bareham and Hopkinson and Cradock all sneak in some cucumber, which certainly pulls its weight on the texture front. Grigson mixes in some white cabbage, presumably because of its robust texture – it works pretty well, but its vegetal flavour feels a bit rustic in a dish with pretensions to grandeur. Iceberg, though certainly crisp, is just too watery, and cos doesn't offer quite the same flavour, plus the larger leaves mean you're more likely to end up with a forkful of limp shreds. ![]() Smith also adds rocket to her little gem, which I find too peppery the greens should offer a refreshing contrast to the spicy sauce, as well as a welcome crunch, which points me in the direction of the little gem. Bareham and Hopkinson and Grigson go for little gem Rhodes and Heston Blumenthal for iceberg Smith for cos and Berry for a bag of mixed leaves. I'd always associated the prawn cocktail with the dreaded iceberg lettuce, but as it wasn't introduced to this country until the early 1980s, I suspect Cradock's "crisp heart of lettuce" is more likely to have been a soft or gem. I like Grigson's idea of using a mixture of prawns to vary the texture and flavour, so I'm adding some of Cradock's sweet, chewy little shrimps as well, but feel free to make up the weight with prawns if you can't find them. The next best thing is the ready-cooked but unshelled variety, which will, of course, require you to put in the legwork yourself, but the results are well worth it. The problem is, I'm convinced that smaller North Atlantic prawns have a sweeter flavour than the farmed east Asian giants – to say nothing of the very dubious ethical issues surrounding the latter, which put them straight on the blacklist – but it is remarkably hard to come by the cold water sort in their raw form. Lamenting the disappearance of freshly boiled prawns at the British seaside, Bareham and Hopkinson recommend whole cooked prawns, shelled Mary Berry suggests "cooked, peeled North Atlantic prawns, drained and dried" (though those in her photo look to be of a larger variety than the aforementioned commas) Gary Rhodes gives the reader the choice of the "small, pink, ready-cooked variety", which he describes as "moist and full of flavour", or large king prawns Cradock uses shrimps or prawns and Sophie Grigson prefers a mixture of cooked, unpeeled prawns.Ĭlearly, in an ideal world, I'd take a leaf from Delia's book and cook the prawns myself. Delia Smith reckons that "the very best version of this is made with prawns (either fresh or frozen in their shells) that you have cooked yourself", and she dry-fries them before use. This is a dish that stands and falls by its prawns – the soggy, barely thawed "little pink commas", as Bareham and Hopkinson put it, have no hope against the deluge of pink sauce. ![]()
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