Friday, December 28, 2007

2nd annual Cambridge seafood festival

I read once that it was important to have your own personal traditional events. Not just the ones that many share like Christmas and New Year but an occasion that was more unique. The article suggested an annual meal to celebrate the birth of a favourite icon or hero or to recreate some seminal moment in your family life. It went on to advocate that this would be a festivity that would hopefully cherished by your children and they would go onto commemorate also.

Last year D and I went on some sort of trolley dash in Marks & Spencer’s and ended with rather a lot of fishy delights and when undecided what to conjure up for tonight’s meal opted to repeat the idea. It seems a tad ostentatious to call it a “seafood festival” as really this should conjure up more hunter-gatherer antics than placing a few well chosen items into a shopping basket. But sometimes I think judicious shopping is almost as talented as good cooking! Well that’s my excuse anyway!

We weren’t quite as indulgent as last year, this time we went for a lobster Rockefeller, crab pâté, more Coquilles St Jacques, marinated salmon on skewers, the palest smoked salmon on blinis topped with roe and M&S’s new offering the queen scallops, chorizo on potato rounds and toasted sour dough bread. And even the table décor was a little more under-the-sea coloured with the new turquoise linen!

I do think this is worthy of an annual celebration. Lobster tail anyone?

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