Colm O'Gorman: Here's my juicy and tender prawn cocktail – Korean style

Maybe it is an age thing, but I have been feeling very nostalgic in the kitchen of late. I was talking to a friend recently about the sort of food that we used to eat when we were kids, both the everyday and the special treats. I was born in the mid-sixties, so most of my childhood food memories date back to between the early seventies and the mid-eighties. Sunday lunch was usually a roast dinner, and for dessert, a trifle, or a cheesecake, or on a very special occasion a baked Alaska. We did not usually have starters, but if we did it would usually be a honeydew melon or a prawn cocktail. There are I think, few dishes more emblematic of that period than the prawn cocktail. Cooked prawns, usually defrosted as fresh prawns were a rarity in Irish shops back then, atop a bed of shredded lettuce and topped off with Marie Rose sauce, basically, mayonnaise, and ketchup combined, served up in a glass goblet or glass of some description.

Thinking about those dishes got me imagining how they might have been had we had access then to the amazing range of ingredients that we can find locally relatively easily these days. I love reimagining classic dishes, putting a fresh spin on them, adding new and exciting flavours that not only update but also improve a classic.