This salad epitomizes the Vietnamese love of contrasting flavors and textures.
Over the many years that I've cooked with shiso I've discovered it's the perfect counterpoint to fresh crabmeat.
In this brasserie's simple and fabulous choucroute, the slab bacon gives some of the smokiness and fattiness of a classic choucroute garnie to a salmon version.
Note: We found that 1 green chile was enough, but add more if you like things fiery.
This is the basic, classic Chinese preparation for any live seafood, and it always is a hit, underscoring the prawns' natural sweetness. Most seafood sellers will package spot prawns to stay alive for several hours. If you get a few with roe attached, consider yourself lucky; it is a delicacy.
Scale up the recipe according to how many lobster shells you have; sauté them in batches if necessary.
If any of your guests have a problem with shellfish, you can make this soup without the shrimp and it will still taste sublime, just set a helping of soup aside before you add the shrimp. Look for fennel bulbs with light green fronds in the center.
Ingredients
These supions, as small cuttlefish are called in the South of France, are neither battered nor deep-fried, as fried calamari typically are in the United States, but instead lightly floured and pan-fried in shallow oil. It therefore becomes necessary to sweat out the water from the squid before those liquids can dilute the hot oil. This process adds to the cooking time and thus the risk of tough squid. Although extremely tender pan-fried calamari may prove an elusive goal, I discovered that cutting the squid into small pieces rather than rings produces a far less chewy outcome.