I was worried. As we continued to feed course after course of mollusc, bivalve and crustacean I thought I might have overdone it. They had started with little toasts of potted shrimps, chopped whelks in garlic butter (trust me) and stuffed mussels. They paused for a little snack of oysters and langoustines – big fat juicy ones too – before slurping on some spaghetti alla vongole. They didn’t seem phased. We ploughed on. Nobody asked for a break, except for one wine merchant and his chums who disappeared for a fag half way through. The piece de resistance was a Nage of lobster (only a half) with a handful of scallops and a lovely little crab boudin created especially for the occasion. (Recipe is terribly simple: fillet and pin bone some whiting. Chop it to a puree in a food processor. Push this puree through a sieve. Put it in a bowl on ice and beat in egg white and then double cream. Fold in freshly picked crab meat, freshly chopped chilli and dill and season well. Pipe into sausage skins, mould into sausages and then poach at 90 degrees for twenty two minutes. Chill. Remove skins. Poach gently in the courtbouillon to reheat.)
They polished off some cheese with a 1997 Grand Cru Chablis (Reserve de l’Obedience) having slurped their way up the gears from Petit Chablis to Premier Cru Les Vaillons. Of these seventy diners, seventy finished every morsel on their plate. This says something about seafood. The Greeks were right: there is something metaphysical about it. We are not bound by rules of appetite or hunger. The road to immortality is not littered with broken dreams and ideologies but with discarded oyster shells and the carapaces of lobsters. We have langoustines and lobsters, razor clams, mussels, oysters and cockles in great profusion for the next two weeks. See if it isn’t true.
