My Grandmother's Funeral

For those of you who thought I had left you at the table in the restaurant and climbed out of the window in the Ladies' loo, this is the explanation for my recent silence. It comes with a side order of apologies.

PRAWN VOL AU VENTS

Before lunch at my grandparents' house, when they had guests, there would be heavy crystal glasses of gin and tonic. There would be small Chinese bowls of elderly peanuts. But above all there would be prawn vol au vents.

Before I knew that the words were French, certainly before I knew how to spell vol au vents, there they were - always prawn - a fixed feature in the landscape of my culinary life. In the car on the way to see my grandparents one of us would always say, "I do hope Granny has made vol au vents". And she always had.

As my grandmother's dementia progressed, vol au vents were one of the incidental losses. She had never used to eat that many vol au vents herself. Her pleasure in them had been that we all loved them so much. She used to laugh at our cries of delight when she brought a plate of them through into the drawing room. So as her dementia set in, none of us made vol au vents for her. And she had forgotten to make them for us.

When my grandmother died, I knew that there had to be vol au vents at her funeral. There was never a written recipe, but this is how they were made:

1. Defrost some frozen prawns in a dish. Reserve the liquid that comes off them. This may take some time. Overnight in the fridge is an option.
2. Later, cook the vol au vents cases in the oven.
3. Make a very thick white sauce: a bit of butter, about the same of flour, then some milk and the liquid from the prawns. After the prawn liquid it should be as thin as single cream.
4. Season the sauce with salt, pepper, a dash or two of anchovy essence and a pinch of paprika or cayenne.
5. Mix the defrosted prawns in to the sauce.
6. Teaspoon the prawn mixture into the vol au vent cases.
7. Serve on a plate with a Chinese pattern.