Ah prawn cocktail. Conjures up images of Fanny Cradock and 80s dinner parties, where it would be followed by duck a l'orange and blackforest gateau. Back in those days, it would probably be served in a stemmed cocktail glass, with a few prawns on a bed of iceberg lettuce, smothered in a mixture of ketchup and mayonnaise (masquerading of course as the much posher sounding Marie Rose sauce), with a wedge of lemon.
Thankfully, the dish has been given the Jamie Oliver makeover, not just to bring it into the 21st century, but to convert what is traditionally an hors d'oeuvre into a main meal. This is partly achieved by adding in some homemade sundried tomato flatbread. You may remember that some of my previous attempts at making dough based items have not been resounding successes (the recent sage dumplings to go with the squash soup for instance) so I'd be lying if I said I was confident, but the rest of the meal looked easy to put together.
You start by making the dough, and I took the controversial decision to employ Lolz as a "baking consultant" to oversee the dough making process. With the bread in the pan, all you need to do is put the salad together, fry the king prawns and make the sauce.
It's ok. To be honest it's one of most basic dishes I've made so far but the Marie Rose sauce, with a hit of tabasco and brandy, enlivens it a bit and the bread, amazingly, works! It's soft but crispy with a strong flavour of tomato and basil.
Lolz gave the dish 7/10 - the king prawns were a bit pointless considering how messy they are and she didn't really like the seeds. Difficulty rating 3/10.
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