Cocktail Sauce for Seafood

November 21, 2000

The A&P Show has been part and parcel of New Zealand life for many, many years. A&P stands for Agricultural and Pastoral and every district worth its salt has time set aside on the annual calendar for its local show.

When I was a child I used to spend numerous holidays with farming relatives and showtime was always a big event. We'd pile in the car and head off to the showground for a day of fun, sun and adventure.

I guess my uncle did the agricultural stuff. There was always plenty of farm machinery to look at, plenty of toys for bucolic boys. And of course, masses of livestock. My cousins and I liked the junior animals - cute woolly lambs, calves that would suck your fingers, squealy little piglets. Much more fun than huge and stately bulls.

We'd wander around the various activities - showjumping, woodchopping and sawing. There was always someone on the end of a microphone or a megaphone urging us to go here, go there - the judging of the baked goods or the preserves, the pet calves' parade, a ride on the fire engine.

The inner person had to be satisfied and no outdoor event could exist in this country without the ubiquitous kiwi hotdog. It would have to be one of the more revolting culinary offerings in existence and it is still available to this day.

The major ingredient is a saveloy, which my dictionary tells me is a highly seasoned dried sausage. It may be elsewhere in the world. In New Zealand it is a pre-cooked rubbery sausage with a bright red skin. It is traditionally simmered in water and eaten with bread, butter and lashings of tomato sauce or ketchup. If a butcher makes his own, you can strike it very lucky and get a nicely seasoned, tasty saveloy, enclosed in an animal sausage casing that isn't half bad. If you're really lucky, the butcher may even smoke his saveloys and it makes quite a good brunch snack. But at the other end of the acceptability scale you could strike the bland, mass-produced variety sheathed in a kind of plastic manmade skin.

The Spouse and I argue about the skin. He removes the skin, no matter its origin. I maintain the animal-based one is OK to eat and the artificial one probably so or they would be allowed to use it. But I digress.

The saveloy becomes a hotdog when it is impaled on a flat wooden stick, dipped in batter then deepfried. When you hand over your money, the hotdog is plunged into tomato sauce then handed over. The mix of bland sausage, greasy batter and tomato sauce is truly unforgetttable. You can spend the next several hours being reminded of your dietary indiscretion. But when you're a kid, a kiwi hotdog is pretty magic.

Also high on the list of show fare is candy floss as it's known here. Others will know it as spun sugar and cotton candy. No show is a show without a fistful of bright pink candy floss. You watch in eager anticipation as the pink sugar goes into the rapidly spinning drum and the little wisps of floss are gathered on a stick. It melts on your tongue with a delicious tingling toffee flavour. And gets sweeter and sweeter‚ and sweeter. So you wash it down with a carbonated drink. And then sink your teeth into a toffee apple.

About this time you meet up with the grown-ups who replenish your dwindling pocket money. The rides call. I remember the merry-go-round and ferris wheel cranking out the latest Buddy Holly tunes as we whizzed around and up and down, frequently regretting the uninhibited consumption of candy floss, hot dogs, fries and ice creams that had gone before.

These days you're just as likely to be able to pick up all manner of ethnic cuisines, at the foodstalls. But for me that icon of the A&P Show remains the hotdog.

Part of the local show week celebrations included race meetings and we went along to the harness racing. We did it in style and attended a champagne lunch. It featured one of the more spectacular seafood buffets I have seen in a while - oysters on the shell, prawns, baked salmon, smoked salmon, marinated squid, mussels - and crayfish. There were plenty of other choices - tender venison steaks, ham, salads, vegetables, masses of calorie laden desserts. But I was happy with my seafood.

I thought I would share this week a very simple cocktail sauce that goes marvellously well with cold seafood. I first tasted it on raw oysters. But I can vouch that it is just wonderful on crayfish or lobster, freshly cooked prawns and mussels.

Seafood sauce

1/2 cup horseradish sauce
1/2 cup tomato sauce (ketchup)
juice of one lemon
several shakes of Tabasco sauce

Mix all ingredients well together and spoon over the seafood of your choice, or use as a dipping sauce.

The horseradish gives just the right amount of bite.