A tidal wave of fruits de mer

I’m sure you know the old (and rather groan worthy) joke about being on a “see food diet”, you see food and you eat it. Well D and I seem to have reinterpreted that as see seafood and eat it. It all started with wanting to try the M&S crab gratins that M had been rather impressed by and we thought they would make a fine starter before – whatever we decided to whip up for Sunday lunch. We secured the last 4 gratins, though only just as another customer had her eye on them but thankfully just wasn’t quick enough. She lingered behind us for a while on the off chance we changed our mind – but we didn’t. Then we spotted some mini coquilles St. Jacques which is another particular favourite from pervious gatherings. The coquilles were next to the mini smoked salmon bagels and it would be rude to leave those behind. As we were on a roll M&S have a fine platter containing: king prawns, smoked mackerel, spicy prawns, really tasty crab pâté and plain old peeled prawns. And because they were there we snapped up the salmon mousse crescents also. So this fine selection was finished off with a couple of salads, cucumber salad, sour dough French bread and granary bread. And lo and behold we had a veritable seafood feast laid out before us decorated by my rather beautiful black fairy lights (I know it shouldn’t work, but it does!). This was all washed down with some delicious bubbly, not your conventional Sunday lunch but extremely wonderful all the same. And the crab gratins were indeed fabulous, good spot M!