that recipe...

the not so secret seafood cocktail sauce...

that recipe folks is akin to the holy quail (the quail you can taste at the vietnam restaurant and is on my last supper list)...unbelievable to think that after all these years i have finally been granted access! and yes thanks to my bestie in port lincoln i can finally reveal and share with you the secret of the prawn dip. and what makes this now even more outrageous is that all these years (which amount to over twenty, i know scary) i have found out this...the said witholder of this culinary secret (i will not mention names coz she is croatian and well take it from me, you dont want to be messing with the croatian gospodjas!!!) isn't even the original creator of this dip i came to know as a young woman living in port lincoln. how very dare she!!! indeed not even the creator of this dip and she had the audacity to keep this a secret from us all this time. but culinary karma has now come to bite her on her bum to set this recipe free...go prawn dip and make yourself at home on all the dining tables of australia!!! go global if you have to!!!
     seriously viewers i know how it is sometimes. you go to someones house and your tastebuds come alive. you think OMG this is sensational. you think OMG i need to have this recipe. you think OMG she said a big fat NO! what do you mean NO? i have to confess i am not one for giving away all my recipes either but i think a few basic rules can be applied here. if it is a secret family recipe that has been handed down for centuries and you are a single woman in need of a husband well then yes, no handing down of the recipe until you are married, hee,hee. (you know what they say? the way to a mans heart is through his stomach, believe it or not) but if someone has been kind enough to share their winning formula by all means take it but do not, i repeat DO NOT claim it as your own. culinary integrity must remain intact and culinary credit must be given where it is due; otherwise you are nothing but a culinary fraud. and take it from me viewers i have experienced it personally. someone who takes credit for your recipe and even worse wins a prize for it is nothing more than a stinking rotten egg in my books!
     so back to the prawn dip. originating from port lincoln (which is no surprise considering that some call it the seafood capital of australia) my bestie and i yearned for this recipe upon our first taste. we wanted it and we wanted it badly but...(insert name here) wasn't going to give it up. she was too busy receiving accolades for her marvellous prawn pate. OH (insert name here) that is amazing!holy prawns (insert name here) you should enter your pate in the royal show! cleverly disguised sneer (insert name here)you will never have this recipe while i walk the earth, just call me queen prawn pate if you don't mind. we had many a tactic, forensic testing, nope that didn't work coz the lady in question certainly made sure there were no scrapes left. and if there were they never saw our tupperware containers. we tried asking politely, you know, kind of casually, that kind of casual where you are trying to be cool but really you are soooooo desperate. we attempted to ply her with alcohol and then hypnotise her with my watch. but alas she was speaking in hrvatski and when i gave the recording to my mum for translation she told us it said, good try losers (insert evil laugh here) so then we just gave up and over time we forgot about it. and now we have it, in our red hot little hands.
     so to put it to the test my bestie made it for our dinner party in lincoln. i looked at the recipe list and thought really? mm, something tells me that perhaps it may have been tweaked by ( insert name here) after all. damn you! none the less it is still delicious but it does require seasoning to taste. so here it goes and while i am at it i will also reveal my secret seafood cocktail sauce which i have to confess isn't such a secret since it is not my own. boy do i feel better now!
ps this is the full recipe it was halved which was still plenty enough for starters and some left over because there were also other things on offer.
the infamous prawn dip ( the full quota)
1 kg of green prawns
2 tubs of phildaelphia cream cheese
1 small jar of praise free mayonaise
1 tbspn of flora margarine
1 large clove of garlic crushed
4 drops of tabasco but more may be required depending on taste
juice 1 lemon
nutmeg to taste
method
cook prawns and chop into chunks, squeeze the juice of one lemon over top when finished
soften cream cheeese and beat with butter until smooth
add mayonaise and garlic and mix thoroughly, then add prawns, tabasco drops and nutmeg to taste, (perhaps 1/4 tspn first), add extra lemon juice if required and adjust seasoning accordingly to your preferred taste.
and that's it viewers try and it and see if you like it, serve with wafer thin crackers. and so to finish off the seafood cocktail sauce is all yours too! bon appetit.
the not so secret seafood cocktail sauce
1 cup of norganic soy mayonaise
juice of 1 lemon
2 tbspns of berenberg takatala sauce
mix through and enjoy