Egg-citing Twist: Japanese Tartar Sauce

Japanese tartar sauce is a delicious version of regular tartare seafood sauce made with kewpie mayonnaise and finely chopped boiled egg! It's a delicate, delicious sauce ideal for seafood and chicken whether it be a boiled lobster tail, peeled prawns or katsu deep fried prawns or chicken. Top it with caviar or freshly grated truffle for a luxe seasoning too! This is a pushy recipe, especially if you love sauces with seafood Dear Reader.

Tartare or tartar sauce is a chunky sauce made using mayonnaise, gherkin pickles and lemon juice. It's fantastic with seafood and is a delicious alternative to thousand island dressing or mayonnaise. While the history of Tartar sauce is debated, it is generally thought that this sauce was named after the Tatar people of Mongolia who settled in the Ukraine and parts of Russia. Japanese tartar sauce is similar to regular tartare sauce however there is one key addition: finely chopped boiled eggs!

I wanted to share this Japanese tartare sauce with you because if you are having a lot of seafood over this holiday season, then you may love this Japanese tartare sauce even more. I love the extra chunkiness that you get from the boiled eggs.

What to serve this Japanese tartare sauce with: fish and chips, prawn katsu, chicken or pork katsu, salt and pepper squid, peeled prawns, grilled salmon, lobster tail, crab meat.

This recipe for Japanese tartar sauce is so easy that you don't really even need tips for it. The one thing I will say is to make sure that you dice everything finely as the texture shows in the sauce. It's so delicious having little chunky bits but if they're big chunks then it's a bit harder to spoon it onto your food or dip it in.

These photos mark the first appearance of my Larry the lobster prop! Larry was given to me as a joke by Nina and Garth many years ago and I've been trying to fit him into a photo ever since. We had a mouse in our former apartment from all of the construction from the tram line and we were going away on holiday and had a pest control guy leave a trap. The only problem was that we were going to be away for a few weeks and we didn't want the mouse decaying and smelling out in our apartment so we asked the only people we thought could handle coming in to look for and dispose of the body: Nina and Garth.

They let themselves in with the keys that we gave them and hid a whole lot of fake spiders, worms, centipedes and this lobster. I'm guessing the lobster was all they could find in the variety store because a lobster isn't going to elicit the same sort of reaction that a centipede would. For me, I'd be somewhat excited and hungry!

So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever tried Japanese tartare sauce? Do you prefer it to regular? Do you think you could handle disposing of a mouse?

Japanese Tartare Sauce

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: 0 minutes

• 1/2 cup/125g/4ozs mayonnaise
• 2 boiled eggs, finely chopped
• 45g/1.6ozs white onion, finely diced
• 45g/1.6ozs cornichons, finely diced
• 2 teaspoons finely chopped chives
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh dill
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
• Salt and pepper to taste

Step 1 - Mix the mayonnaise with the boiled eggs, onion, cornichons, chives, dill, lemon juice, Dijon mustard and lemon zest. Season with salt and pepper. Store in a jar or airtight container. Will last in the fridge for up to 1 week.