Spicy seafood salad and chorizo-stuffed buns for seaside picnics
She lives in Rye, a ridiculously charming seaside town on the south coast. Every evening, after her three-hour round-trip commute to our London office, she walks through the dunes to the beach, while her two kids race ahead.
Her Instagram stories say it all. All that effortless seaside living - swimming, fisherman's roll from the Dungeness snack shack, picnics on the beach most evenings. Games that always involve pebbles - who can skim furthest, whose tower stands longest, drawing with pebble pens that the tide will claim by morning. Entertainment that costs nothing.
Meanwhile, after my considerably shorter commute, I'm back in the city pointing fans at my face, wondering why I chose to live somewhere that becomes a furnace the moment the sun appears.
I do love London living - the noise, the options, decent coffee at 6am and excellent curry at midnight. But watching Shona's post-work beach picnics does make me question my choices. I've tried recreating them in my London garden - but it's just not the same!
The best I can do is get the barbecue going and grill something, or make a whole lot of salads and imagine I can hear the waves.
Watermelon and feta, or another kind of feta-fruit combination, is the kind of salty-sweet beach food that I grew up with. But every coastal culture has its own perfect seaside bite. Spanish chiringuitos serve paella from massive pans while you sit at wobbly plastic tables. I’ve been enjoying those in Ibiza for the last two summers. In Thailand, it's som tam - a fierce green papaya salad that cuts through the heaviest heat. Mexican beaches have elote - corn slathered with mayo, cheese, and chilli.
I asked around the test kitchen for my colleagues' beach food memories. Chaya tells me that in Mauritius, families take portable gas hobs to the beach and make fresh biryani using the morning's catch. Angelos remembers the watermelon man along Cypriot beaches, shouting "KARPOUZI!" while balancing enormous boxes of cut melon on his rickety bicycle.
We all eat so differently by water, but the approach feels the same. Everything portable, unfussy, designed for sandy hands and unstable surfaces. It's also permission to eat messily and simply - whatever tastes good and travels well.
This week's recipes are our attempts at bottling that seaside magic. A spicy seafood salad that actually improves as it sits, and chorizo-stuffed buns that are perfect for picnics - whether you're lucky enough to eat them by the sea or from your increasingly sweaty kitchen.
Spicy seafood salad (Acapulco ceviche)
José Lizzaralde from Carousel recently spent an afternoon in our test kitchen, showing us his Acapulco approach to ceviche (a mix of marinated seafood, full of citrus). It's quite different from the Peruvian versions you might know - this one's more boisterous, packed with orange and lime juice, spiked with jalapeños, and given proper depth with Worcestershire and Maggi.
Unlike classic ceviche, where the citrus does all the cooking, José used seafood that's already cooked. We go for prawns, squid, and mussels, but scallops work beautifully, as does any firm white fish—hake, cod, even fish cheeks if you can get them. Buy them ready-cooked or poach them lightly yourself.
Make the marinade the night before, then fold in your seafood thirty minutes before serving (or packing up your picnic).
Chouriço pao (chorizo-stuffed buns)
