Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [249]
When the rice is half-cooked, put in the chicken, pushing it down so that only the drumstick and wing bones stick up. Pour in the saffron stock and most of the remaining stock.
After 10 minutes put in the squid. In another 5 minutes, add the vegetables and uncooked lobster pieces. Check the chicken breast pieces and remove them if they are done: they should not get too dry and can be put back at the end to heat through with the prawns and mussels. Another 8–10 minutes and everything should be cooked. Add any remaining stock or water, if necessary to prevent sticking. Shake the pan from time to time, but avoid stirring it up.
Just before serving, put in the shelled mussels and cut-up, cooked lobster meat, if you had to buy a ready-boiled lobster. Then add the shelled prawns. Last of all, arrange the reserved whole prawns and mussels in their shells on top, after checking the seasoning. Tuck in the lemon wedges and serve.
NOTE In Spanish restaurants, the paellera is sometimes placed in a slightly larger basket tray, with a ring of flowers and fruit in the gap – red and white carnations, yellow lemons, echoing the colours of the food. Festive but confusing.
PLATEAU DE FRUITS DE MER
Our first meal in France, at Avranches or Mont St Michel, or our last before the boat at Cherbourg, is a vast platter of shellfish with a bowl of mayonnaise and a little pot of mignonette sauce. To go with this feast there is a basket of bread, butter and a bottle of white wine from Alsace.
The oval metal dish is placed ceremonially in the centre of the table on a stand. Arranged like a still-life on top of a bed of crushed ice and seaweed there will be winkles, whelks, opened clams and oysters, rising to a central height of prawns, langoustines, spider crabs and, if you are lucky, lobster. The whole thing has a glorious freshness. One picks and eats slowly. Always I am amazed that the whelks, which in Britain are impossibly rubbery, are in France agreeably chewy.
To make such a show here is not easy – for a start our best shellfish seem to go to France. But if you happen to live near the west coast of Scotland, or in some blessed spot near Weymouth or Wells and Cley in Norfolk, you may be lucky.
Quantities need to be judged by eye, and will depend of course on what you can get. Half a decent-sized crab or lobster per person, four oysters, six large mussels, three large langoustines (Dublin Bay prawns), with a scattering of prawns, shrimps and winkles would be reasonable. Always buy shellfish the day you intend to eat it, and if possible cook it yourself. Otherwise you can buy crab and lobsters ready-cooked. At large fishmongers in France you can buy bottled seawater by the litre: be careful about seawater in Britain, it may well be polluted, judging by how few beaches we have that are safe for swimming. Safer to dissolve sea salt in water until an egg will float in it.
Serve everybody with a needle stuck into a cork for winkles, with a long slender lobster pick or snail fork for lobster and crab, and lobster shears or nutcrackers for the lobster and crab claws. And large cloth napkins!
CRABS If you are cooking it yourself, take it home as soon as possible. Plunge it into boiling salt water, give it 10 minutes boiling and then simmer it for a further 15 minutes, for a crab weighing just under 1 kg (2 lb). When cold, cut it in half with a cleaver, or a large knife knocked smartly down with a mallet.
LANGOUSTINES, PRAWNS AND SHRIMPS Bring a large pan half-full of very salty water to the boil. Plunge in the shellfish. By the time the water returns to the boil, the shrimps are likely to be done (try one to see). Prawns will take a couple of minutes or more according to size. The moment they change colour, try one.