Recipe – Easy Seafood Salad

Last weekend, when we received Normita’s young friends for lunch, I prepared a foolproof meal that I can assemble quickly as work has been so busy in the last few months that I did not have time to prepare anything to involved. All of the recipes can easily be done with a an hour or two of prep time total depending on how quick you are with a knife. We started with a very easy first course, a seafood salad that I put together for the first time more than 25 years ago. I used to do it regularly as a last minute first course when I did not have time to prepare anything else. It can be done with a variety of seafood, but my old standby is to make it with small cooked shrimps and with nice chunks of cooked crab meat. Luckily when we went to the Jamaica market early Saturday morning our fish merchant was unpacking some nice fresh shrimps and some nice crab meat that he had just picked up. The quality was stunning and it made a great first course.

For the main course I had some frozen turkey breast and I prepared it as Sweet and Sour Turkey Cheng Tu style, as recipe I already posted some time ago for chicken https://www.igourmand.com/index.php/archives/recipes/40 . The dessert, at Normita’s request, was the bread pudding which I posted the recipe recently https://www.igourmand.com/index.php/archives/recipes/102 .

The seafood salad is best prepared just prior to serving, but it can be done a few hours ahead and refrigerated until time to serve. I have always like it and I plan to do it more often as seafood is great and cheap around here, and I had not done it in ages and I really do not know why as I like it a lot. To see some pictures of the celebrations from last Saturday, have a look at our new blog.

Ingredients

1 pound small cooked shrimps
1/2 pound cooked crab meat
1/2 cup golden raisins soaked at least an hour in 4 tbs brandy
2 medium stalks celery chopped in fine cubes
1 apple cored and cut into small cubes
3-4 tbs mayonnaise
Juice of 2 small limes
6 large leaves of Boston lettuce
salt and pepper to taste

Preparation

1. Place the seafood, apple cubes, raisins with brandy, and celery cubes in a large bowl and toss together
2. Season with salt and pepper and the lime juice
3. Add the mayonnaise and mix with a large spoon until the ingredients are well blended
4. Serve portions on the lettuce leaves

Lucito