Ralf’s Freezer Seafood Dinner
The Mayor asked what I had cooked during the weekend. On Saturday, my wife and I had eaten in a nice Italian restaurant in Bremerhaven. On Sunday, however, we ate convenience food.
The Mayor stopped everything.
“Just one moment. Mr Ralf Brand says he ate convenience food.”
He spoke as if I had announced the end of civilisation.
“The French Revolution is nothing compared with this. Marie Antoinette was executed for less.”
I had to explain.
For me, convenience food does not mean opening a plastic box containing a mysterious industrial dinner. It means buying good ingredients, keeping them in the freezer, and using them when I do not want to prepare a twenty-course barbecue.
We had frozen Argentinian red scampi, together with calamari cubes and calamari sticks from a Spanish supermarket. I put them into the deep-fat fryer and made a strong cocktail sauce with a lot of garlic and some piri-piri.
Then I made a fresh tomato salad.
So yes, it was freezer food.
But it was freezer food à la Ralf.
The revolution was cancelled.
This is not a recipe for an exact number of grams. It is a practical dinner. Use enough seafood and salad for the people sitting at your table.
Crispy Seafood with Garlic and Piri-Piri Sauce
Ingredients
- Frozen Argentinian red shrimp or scampi, peeled
- Frozen calamari pieces, rings, cubes or sticks
- Oil for deep-frying
- Cocktail sauce
- Plenty of fresh garlic
- Piri-piri sauce, to taste
Method
- Heat the oil in a deep-fat fryer according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
- Cook the frozen seafood in batches until it is hot, crisp and golden. Follow the cooking instructions on the packaging.
- Do not put too much seafood into the fryer at one time. The oil must stay hot.
- Put the cocktail sauce into a small bowl.
- Crush or finely grate plenty of fresh garlic into the sauce.
- Add a little piri-piri. Taste it, then add more when you want extra heat.
- Mix well and serve with the hot seafood.
Ralf’s warning: We love garlic and put it into almost everything. But after this sauce, keep a glass of water beside the bed. During the night, the body may announce: “We are drinking now!”
Three-Tomato Salad
My wife discovered this simple salad online after seeing a recipe from Felicitas Then. It uses different tomatoes because each one brings a slightly different taste, shape and texture.
Ingredients
- Three different kinds of ripe tomatoes
- A mixture of large and small tomatoes
- 1 small red onion
- Thick red balsamic vinegar
- Good olive oil
- A small amount of maple syrup
- Salt
- Black pepper
- Fresh basil leaves
Method
- Cut the small tomatoes in half.
- Cut the larger tomatoes into slices or bite-sized pieces.
- Arrange all the tomatoes in a serving bowl or on a large plate.
- Cut the red onion into very thin slices and add it to the tomatoes.
- Drizzle over some thick balsamic vinegar and good olive oil.
- Add only a small amount of maple syrup to balance the acidity.
- Season with salt and black pepper.
- Stack the basil leaves and cut them into thin strips—right side, left side, right side, left side, as Ralf explains it.
- Add the basil and gently mix everything together.
- Taste and adjust the vinegar, oil, salt or pepper.
Serve the salad beside the crispy seafood, with the strong garlic and piri-piri sauce.
It is simple.
It is fresh.
And it is very, very good.
