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.