In mid-August we went to our usual Saturday morning haunt, the Borough Market . We had our shopping list at the ready, written on the back of the coming week's menu. It does sound terribly boringly organised, but I find that it's the only way to guarantee (more or less) that we cook every night, instead of improvising something less tasty or settling for something ready-made. It also cuts down on impulse 'Yummy that looks good' purchases which will not be cooked (because other ingredients, such as TIME, will be missing from the store cupboards).

Unless of course the 'Yummy that looks good' happens to be live crayfish, crawling all over the fishmonger's counter, poking the red snapper in the eye, pinching the octopus and generally making a mad dash for freedom. Moreover, they were dead-cheap (even though they were very much alive). The next day we saw a sign in a Swedish restaurant in Marylebone advertising a plate of 12 crayfish for the price of the 2 KILOS we bought.

Poorer in sterlings but richer in nasty little beasts, we arrived home where foresight (and Mum-in-Law) told us to keep the Houdinis somewhere they couldn't escape from: a big iron-cast pot and a lid, held down by a chopping board. As we went out to buy some missing ingredients, I had visions of returning to our nice little flat, transformed into a scene from Gremlins with the crayfish in the starring role. I had given them sunlight, after all...

Lunch thus incarcerated, we set about preparing the court-bouillon: onion, selleri, bay leaves, dill and peppercorns in water with a glass of white wine (for the pot, not the cooks!).

Once the bath was at a pleasant (aka boiling) temperature, we lured (aka threw) the little b****** into the cauldron (a much nicer word than pot, don't you find?) and watched the magic unfold: the brown/greenish/bluish shells gradually turned a vivid hue of red. A bit like Scandinavian humans in a sauna. Same shade.

The only difference in this case being that instead of throwing the scarlett beasts into a frozen lake or rolling them in newly-fallen snow, we dipped them in a dill mayonnaise and drank white wine instead of akvavit . This is the point where our Swedish friends would scream, saying that Kraeftor (Crayfish, in Swedish) should only be accompanied by ice-cold akvavit. Preferably one shot to every claw, or one to every tail if one is a wimp... I may be a Super-Wimp, but at least I didn't wear a bib while eating them! And now you know why Swedes always sing when they eat crayfish...