Billy Otis · Hong Kong

Seafood Platter

Time1 h
LevelMedium
Fish and seafood
Seafood Platter

A seafood platter is the ultimate ocean feast, offering a stunning array of flavors and textures from the sea. Whether it features oysters, shrimp, lobster, mussels, or grilled fish, each bite delivers freshness and natural sweetness. Typically served with zesty lemon wedges, buttery

Adapted for a home kitchen by our editors from Billy Otis's restaurant recipe. At Socialito in Hong Kong, Billy Otis plates grilled lobster tail on a citrus beurre blanc with a crab salad topped with green beans and a pile of raw sweet shrimp (amaebi) marinated in herbs and citrus zest. The home version uses raw lobster tails instead of whole live lobsters and cooked cold-water prawns instead of raw amaebi, both easier to buy. It fills in the missing amounts, corrects the butter typo and the green bean time, and halves the beurre blanc for four plates. Not yet tested from this page.

Ingredients

Method

  1. For the beurre blanc, put the orange and lemon juice and zest, vinegar, ginger, thyme and peppercorns in the small saucepan and boil for 5–8 minutes, until reduced by half.
  2. Add the cream, simmer for 1 minute and strain into a clean small pan.
  3. Over very low heat, whisk in the cold butter a few cubes at a time until the sauce is thick and glossy, and season with salt.
  4. Keep the sauce warm but not hot, in a bowl set over warm water; it splits if it boils.
  5. For the crab salad, mix the crab with the fennel, cabbage, mayonnaise, smoked paprika, lemon juice, basil and a pinch of salt, and refrigerate.
  6. Mix the prawns with the parsley, thyme, lemon and orange zest, lime juice, olive oil and a pinch of salt, and refrigerate for 10–30 minutes.
  7. Boil the green beans in salted water for 2–3 minutes, until crisp-tender, cool them in the iced water and drain.
  8. Cut through the top shell of each lobster tail with the scissors, then split the tail in half lengthwise with the heavy knife and pull out the dark vein.
  9. Heat the grill pan over high heat until very hot.
  10. Brush the lobster flesh with oil, season with salt and pepper and grill flesh-side down for 3 minutes.
  11. Turn the tails and cook shell-side down for 2–3 minutes, until the flesh is just opaque, about 60°C (140°F) in the thickest part.
  12. Warm the beans in the frying pan with the olive oil and season with salt.
  13. Put a quarter of the crab salad on the left of each plate and lay the green beans on top.
  14. Pile the prawns on the right of each plate.
  15. Spoon 2 tablespoons of beurre blanc into the middle and set two lobster halves on it.
  16. Serve the rest of the sauce on the side for dipping.
What we changed for home
  • Whole lobsters, boiled and then grilled, replaced with raw lobster tails, split and grilled Tails are sold frozen in many supermarkets, and the chef plates only the tail. If you buy whole lobsters, boil them for 7 minutes as he does, then split and grill the tails.
  • Raw amaebi replaced with cooked, peeled cold-water prawns Amaebi (sweet shrimp) is eaten raw and sold sashimi-grade mainly in Japanese shops; small cooked prawns are just as sweet. Use amaebi if you can buy it.
  • Butter in the beurre blanc read as ½ lb, and the whole sauce halved The original says '1/ lb', a typo. Half the sauce, with 115 g of butter, is plenty for four plates.
  • Smoked paprika in the crab salad cut from 1 tablespoon to 1 teaspoon A tablespoon would swamp and colour the crab; the capital 'T' was most likely meant as a teaspoon.
  • Thyme in the prawn marinade cut to 1 teaspoon, with olive oil and salt added A tablespoon of raw thyme masks sweet prawns, and a little oil carries the zest flavour.
  • Green beans boiled for 2–3 minutes instead of 30 seconds, and an amount given Thin green beans are still raw after 30 seconds; the original gives no quantity.

The dish in the photograph was cooked by the restaurant for this story. Photo: Oleksandr Slyadnyev.

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