Tonight I had such a craving for seafood of the type you just can’t get in Brighton: fat Florida shrimp, sweet Alaskan crab, tender New England scallops. Don’t get me wrong, the fresh mackerel and plaice you can get around here are wonderful in their own right, but tonight I wanted something different—something I just couldn’t get.

I did the best I could. A quick trip to Waitrose yielded some decent (if previously frozen) tiger prawn tails and some big fresh Red Sea prawns, which I marinated in lemon, olive oil, fresh mint and sea salt and then cooked quickly in their shells in a hot griddle pan; cooking shrimp in their shells like that not only keeps them juicy and protects them from the heat, it also makes them far more flavorful than peeled shrimp.

After last night’s meat-laden meal, I was looking for something lighter tonight, so I just served the shrimp along with avocado and red onion dressed in a lightly curried vinaigrette and some bulgur mixed with rocket (arugula), tomatoes, green onions, feta, and olive oil and lemon juice.

It wasn’t exactly like peeling fresh shrimp on the porch in Florida or cracking open crab legs on a boat in Alaska, but it was lemony and salty and messy and yummy, and it certainly took the edge off of my craving for That Which I Cannot Have. You gotta make do with what ya got, right?