How to make: Prawn Cocktail with Marie Rose from scratch

The best starter ever? Let me know what you think below.

Recipe:

Prawn Cocktail

Marie Rose
3 egg yolks
30g Dijon mustard
10g Maldon salt
3 tbsp Worcester sauce
10/12 drops tabasco
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10g dry sherry
10g cognac
5g vodka
100g ketchup
Black pepper to taste
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500ml vegetable oil
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Whisk the egg yolks, Dijon mustard, tabasco, Worcester sauce, salt and black pepper together in a medium sized bowl. Slowly emuslfiy in the vegetable oil while whisking constantly to form a mayonnaise. Once the mayonnaise has thickened, whisk in the dry sherry, cognac, vodka. Correct the seasoning if needed with more salt or ketchup. If using straight away, add the prawns and bind in a generous amount of sauce.

Building the Prawn Cocktail
1/2 avocado per person, skin and stone removed, diced into large pieces
Iceberg lettuce, cut 1cm thick
2 gem lettuce leaves
Prawns in brine
Marie rose sauce
1 cooked crevette, in the shell
1 lemon wedge
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Mix the prawns with a generous amount of the marie rose sauce. In the serving dish, place the diced avocado, top with iceberg lettuce. Then follow with prawns bound in sauce. Garnish with one large, cooked, deheaded prawn, a wedge of lemon, gem lettuce, serve with buttered sliced brown bread.

Let’s just go out on the whole worldwide web saying that no one’s ever made it before. I own it and then let them come at me. [Music] Okay, been looking forward to doing this one. This is probably one of my all-time favorite dishes. This is the classic prawn cocktail with a little twist my way. But it’s the best starter there is. You agree? Actually, for a prawn cocktail, there is quite a lot of bits and pieces needed. Just to quickly run through the ingredients. We’ve got a bowl to make mayonnaise over here with some egg yolks in it. We’ve got some lovely vegetable oil. We’ve got wora. We’ve got Tabasco. We’ve got iceberg lettuce. Canon be. We’ve got avocado. I like it in there. We’ve got some gem lettuce, some lemon, prawns in brine. I’ll talk about those in the video. We got some cognac, some cherry, some shellon prawns, bit of dijon mustard, and favorable ketchup, right? All that needs to somewhere else. Okay, we’re going to start by making a classic mayonnaise. You don’t have to do that. You can buy mayonnaise and just add these ingredients to it. But I like to do it. I want to show you how to do it. That is raw egg yolks. Into that is going a nice amount of Dijon mustard. That’s our kind of stabilizer for the mayonnaise. In there is going to go about 10 or 12 drops of Tabasco sauce, which I love. In there is going into a little bit of worcester sauce. The other ingredients are really wet, so I’m going to use those to basically let the whole thing down at the other end. Classic mayonnaise. Little bit of salt in there for the whole thing. Little bit of magic black pepper in there. Keep whisking. And then we just want a neutral oil, a nice vegetable oil. Nice and slowly. And this is ultimately how you make a mayonnaise. We want this mayonnaise to be quite thick because that’s then we can let it back down with all the other ingredients that are going to really flavor this whole thing up. So that’s three egg yolks in there. And this is a liter of neutral oil. So for me kind of as I’m just whisking this away, but pork cocktail is one of those dishes that I just love and I it takes me right back to my childhood. I think it is one of the best starters there is. I used to be taken, lucky me, to this little Italian restaurant uh by my godparents when I was in my teens. And uh I would always have prawn cocktail. It just felt like the absolute height of sophistication. I loved it. And uh I think I’ve always just had a love of it. We always serve it with the Sunday lunches here upstairs and we serve it at Browns as well, always for Sunday lunch. I just think it’s a dish that’s kind of timeless. Utterly delicious. And if you make the Merry Rose, it just lifts the whole thing to another height. But when you’re making prawn cocktail, you got to think about what’s bringing the crunch, what’s bringing the saltiness, the brininess, what’s bringing the sweetness, what’s bringing the acidity, what’s bringing the texture. Just think about all those little nuances and you will ultimately end up with a dish that is a little bit more than some of its parts. Okay. So, you can see now that that’s like an ultra thick mayonnaise. And that’s what we’re really looking for. We’re looking for a mayonnaise if I keep going there. I’m not going to show you hopefully, but this would split eventually. But that’s like a really thick overly thick mayonnaise. But we want it like that because we’re going to add some loose ingredients that are going to take this back to being what would be more familiar as a merry rose. So into that goes this which is a little bit of cognac for that kind of warmth and alcoholic heat. This is dry cherry. Little bit of that in there. Adds that sort of nuttiness nutty aroma to it that I really like. Into there is going to go some ketchup. Just classic ketchup. In it goes. The one you all know and love. Quite an important part of Merry Rose, but don’t overdo it. And here’s my little secret ingredient. It’s not water. That’s vodka. Actually, that’s adding a little bit of heat. So, there’s cognac cherry and water. And as we mix this in now, this will dilute the mayonnaise right back down again to a sort of mayonnaise sauce that we can then use to coat our delicious prawns. So, a tiny bit more ketchup in there. Just make it a little bit looser. And that is definitely a fantastic merry roast sauce. Now, let’s have a little taste of that. What I don’t like is all this business of kind of putting prawns in a prawn cocktail and then just putting a spoon of Mary Rose over the top. I think it should be done like this. prawns go in. And when I put these prawns in, these are prawns in brine. I particularly like these. I don’t like the frozen prawns. I want the prawns in brine because they’ve got that extra saltiness going on. They’re little small ones. I think they eat really well with this. I love them in there. So, lovely little salty prawns in brine. They add a bit of brininess to it. Mix that in. That is looking like it’s going to end up in a sandwich for my lunch as well. That So, we want prawns that are well bound with our Mary Rose. I reckon that could take a few more prawns. Actually, let’s do that. A few more prawns in there. So, that’s a whole liter of prawns in brine just mixed into our Merry Rose. And we can set that to one side now and get on with constructing what is possibly the best starter in the world. Okay, so there’s a little bit of preparation to do. I always favor iceberg lettuce. I just think it’s the best. However, there is a little trick with this. Very important you don’t just I see people just cut these huge long strips of iceberg lettuce that won’t fit on the spoon. Don’t do that. Cut the cut the lettuce into quarters and then shred it nicely. They will fit on the spoon. They’ll fit nicely in your little glass or whatever you’re using and it will be much easier for your recipients to eat. So, nice bit of shredded iceberg. Not too fine. Not this kind of micro fine shred of iceberg that is really unuser friendly. Don’t do that. So, there’s our nice iceberg. I’m just going to add now. I’m going to use an avocado. I like an avocado in a prawn cocktail. I just think it adds texture. Felt like it. Actually, we used to do these prawn cocktails in this with the prawns over the top and the lettuce. And I didn’t, but I used to see them as a younger younger man. They were all the rage in the day. So, nice bit of peeled avocado. Peel them like that. That’s probably enough for me. Got a lettuce. Right, let’s construct this lovely thing. First things first, a little bit of chopped avocado in there for some luxury. Is it luxury avocado anymore? Probably not. I like it anyway. In goes the lovely iceberg. What a lovely thing. What’s this one doing here? Let’s go heavy on the bronze. Got to be generous. Clues in the name. This is a prawn cocktail, not a lettuce cocktail. Nice chica of lemon. Go in there with couple of pieces of gem lettuce just to give us a bit of texture. Something else to dip at the end. Wrap around the old prawn cocktail. It’s all about the detail right there. Got some nice crevetses which I’m just going to hang over the side. Gives you something to do. No prawn cocktail could possibly be right without the inclusion a bit of brown bread and butter. So that’s just simple brown bread with nice salted butter. I like to finish the prawn cocktail with a little piermont espellet. I mean it would be cayenne pepper really classically but little pon esplet nice prawn crevette I reckon that’s the best starter there is I love a porn cocktail I cannot wait to get involved right the way down there that Mary Rose is peon Takes me back. Takes me back to my childhood. It’s nostalgic. It’s delicious. I think the Merry Rose is a bit more grown up with all that alcohol and heat in there. But ultimately, I’m doing that again this Sunday. Just makes you feel like you’re sitting down for a celebratory meal. God, that’s good. Merry Rose Prawn cocktail. When may you be around?