Fruits of the Sea

Sumptuous, decadent, delicious, extravagant...................all words I have heard to describe the seafood platter we serve to our guests for dinner. As well as WOW, of course!

Funnily enough, I'm not a great lover of shellfish or seafood (although John is) and until I came to Mull my experience had been limited to Scampi or Prawn Cocktail served with lashings of Marie Rose sauce to disguise the taste. It's something to do with the texture and feel of the food in the mouth, plus it seems awfully hard work having to crack open, pick, scrape and suck for very little return in the way of actual substance and good grub in the mouth.

Anyway, we have been busy serving dinners all week and as we specialise in seafood I thought I would share some of what we do with anyone who happens to pop by and visit my blog - unfortunately the sharing will be in a virtual sense and you will just have to use your imagination to taste and smell the food.

All of the seafood is caught locally - my husband John used to be a lobster and crab fisherman so he knows where to go for the best catches; so along with lobster and crab we also serve langoustines (whole prawns), mussels, clams and smoked trout accompanied by a fresh green salad with a delicate lemon dressing, home made potato salad and warm crusty bread with butter. Are you salivating yet?

I was quite worried when we first started serving seafood - you hear horror stories about food poisoning, allergic reactions, etc and because it seems so decadent there is a sense that the food has to be 'tarted up' with sauces and so on. Nothing could be further than the truth!

The seafood doesn't get fresher than it does here - landed at the pier and in the pot within the hour! With a touch of butter, garlic, lemon, lime and white wine and hey presto a gourmet feast fit for a king (and queen). The simpler the food is served, the better it tastes and it looks absolutely fantastic - folks just love having their photos taken with the platters.

One of my first experiences of catching shellfish was a couple of years ago, walking along one of my favourite beaches at a very low tide and coming across colonies of mussels clinging to the rocks hidden away under the kelp and seaweed. What a bonanza of a find - there were hundreds of them and here we were beach combing with nothing to carry them in. Fortunately for us, we had earlier found a fisherman's yellow wellie boot stuck in a crevice high up in one of the rocks, and so having retrieved the wellie boot we used it to collect the mussels. We joked about serving portion sizes as 'half a wellie' or 'a whole wellie'! I'm not sure about the aroma but the mussels tasted just fine.

The first time lobsters and crab were caught and brought in to the kitchen for cooking made me feel quite squeamish. Not ever having seen a live lobster before I was very surprised to discover they were a dark inkey blue in colour and not the bright salmon pink I had always assumed them to be! City chick eh! Doh!

With their claws secured with elastic bands to stop them nipping, all I could think of was Sebastian from Disney's 'Little Mermaid' and when the pan lid started to rattle as though the lobsters were knocking to come out ("Hello, we've been steamed pink and we would like to get out now please!") I couldn't bear the process anymore and had to retire to the sitting room for the rest of the evening whilst my husband carried on with the cooking.

Even today whenever the cooking pot comes out and the crabs and lobsters start trying to creep and crawl their way out of the kitchen sink, I always say sorry to them before they go in the pot and then leave the cooking to John.

I cook with love and I hope they forgive me; our guests say the food is delicious and just occasionally I manage to overcome my guilt and I sample a mouth or two.