Blood Orange Mayonnaise with Prawns / Blutorangen-Mayonnaise mit Riesengarnelen

Difficult to rate. The blood orange mayonnaise was excellent, though not entirely as it was supposed to be - apparently "... add salt, pepper and blood oranges and stir; the orange fillets should end up being small bits of fruit in the mayonnaise" implies stirring with a spoon not a kitchen machine. My bad. Then again you should have seen DB's face when he realised what I had done with his carefully filleted bits of orange.

Before that, the mayonnaise had a perfect consistency, thick and creamy. Afterwards, well... it was pretty liquid, you could just as well have added some orange juice. I added another egg yolk and 150ml oil but didn't manage to get back that consistency. Lessons learned: stir carefully; you might need to drain the orange fillets before adding them; alternatively, use more orange zest, less orange fillets. Lessons apparently not learned yet: read recipe carefully. All in all, though, the mayonnaise was extremely delicious and a great hit. It tasted especially nice with the roasted potatoes, which brings me on to the next issue, ...

... who ever decided that this dish was supposed to be served with store-bought (!) potato chips? You go through such troubles as making your own mayonnaise, only to serve it with chips? Don't get me wrong, I love chips, I have my own secret supply hidden in the kitchen, but I wouldn't ever dream to serve it with such a dish. The roasted poatoes, on the other hand, worked out perfectly.

Last, the prawns... While it was interesting to learn a new technique of how to prepare them, cooking them rendered them bland and tasteless, in contrast to frying them with salt, pepper and a garlic clove. Together with the other ingredients, I tasted everything but the prawns. What a waste of money!

The (blood) orange mayonnaise is definitely something to remember; I could imagine this working very well with e.g. grilled fish but also most kinds of grilled meats (pork? chicken? even beef!).

And just in case you wondered, the oranges were red on the outside, but somehow that didn't seem to translate to the inside colour. Either way worked well. And the second plate actually shows this dish as a main (2 servings) rather than an appetizer (6 servings).