Tangy Seafood Cocktail Sauce

This is the red and robust seafood sauce that was always served with a prawn cocktail when I was a child and young person in California. I was appalled when I later encountered the pink, boring, mayonnaise-based version of seafood sauce (often known as Marie Rose). Try this, and you'll never go back: it has a zippy flavor which for some reason does not overwhelm, but actually beautifully complements, the sweet succulence of really nice fresh, cooked and chilled, prawns (or vastly improves the smaller varieties of shrimp). Good with crab and lobster, too, but best with shrimps.


Ingredients:
1/2 cup ketchup-based chili sauce OR
1/2 cup good-quality ketchup + 1 TBS mild chili powder
1 TBS prepared horseradish
1 TBS fresh lemon juice
2 scant tsp. Worcestershire sauce (shake the bottle first!)
1/4 tsp. salt
Pinch of cayenne or dash of hot chili sauce

How to make it:
Whisk all ingredients together in a small non-metal bowl.
Cover with plastic wrap and chill at least 3 hours before serving.
Makes about 3/4 cup of sauce.

To make a classic prawn cocktail:
Use an urn-shaped ice-cream dish.
Fill this with the sauce and hang the cooked, cold prawns around the edges of it, tails dangling.
Garnish with a thin slice of lemon, twisted.

To make a great shrimp salad:
Combine cooked, drained shrimp of any size with just enough sauce to bind.
Serve well-chilled on salad leaves; garnish with lemon slice as above.

Creamy Stilton & Walnut Tartlets

I can't even tell you how good these are: flaky pastry, creamy filling with the blue-cheese bite of Stilton, crunchy toasted walnuts..  I made them as the appetizer course for our Christmas Eve dinner, but they are definitely good enough to be the main course next time! I heavily tweaked a recipe by Tesco to come up with these, based on what I had on hand. Simple yet superb.


Ingredients:
200g (7 oz.) cream cheese, softened
1 beaten egg
1 crushed garlic clove
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
Fresh grated nutmeg (or 1/8 tsp. ground)
1/4 cup freshly chopped fresh parsley (or 2 TBS freeze-dried)
1 package ready-made all-butter puff pastry
125g (4 oz.) crumbled aged Stilton (or other blue cheese)
25-30g (about 1 oz.) broken walnut pieces
Fresh rosemary to garnish

How to make it:
Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F, less for fan-assisted ovens.
Beat the cream cheese together with the egg, garlic, S&P to taste, nutmeg to taste, and the parsley.
Roll out the pastry and, with a pizza cutter, cut into 6 even-sized rectangles. This should use up the dough; if not, keep scraps for whatever else you want to use them for.
About 1/2" from the edge of each rectangle, run a sharp knife along the pastry, not cutting all the way through, but scoring deeply enough that it will make a ridge when baked.
Place pastry rectangles on baking sheet and bake for just 8-10 minutes, or until it has risen but is only light golden in color.
Remove from oven and, with the back of a spoon, press the rectangle inside the scored area down.
Divide the filling evenly among the rectangles, spreading to fill the area inside the border.
Sprinkle each evenly with the Stilton and scatter the walnuts evenly on each tartlet.
Return to the oven and bake another 10-15 minutes, or until walnuts are toasted, cheese is melted and pastry is puffed and golden.
Place a rosemary twig on each tartlet while still hot, so the flavor is released.
Serve warm (not bubbling hot!) or at room temperature with a good wine.