There is no official recipe for Russian salad and that is precisely its greatest strength. Every household makes it differently, everyone insists theirs is the correct one, and nobody can prove the other is wrong. Spanish chef Alberto Chicote admits this openly - and then explains how he makes it his own.

The difference in his version is not in the ingredients but in the liquid everything is cooked in. First he boils prawns in salted water with two bay leaves - one minute if they are fresh, a little longer if frozen. Then he peels them and returns the shells and heads to the same water to carry on simmering. That is the move. From there on, nothing is boiled in plain water.

Into that same stock go five carrots for around twenty minutes, then five medium potatoes for around forty - until a knife slides in without resistance. Once cooled, the carrot is cut into cubes of roughly six by six millimetres, the potato into small pieces. Two tins of tuna in oil are added, drained and torn apart with fingers, not a fork.

On the mayonnaise Chicote is unambiguous - homemade. Whole eggs in a blender, a little lemon and salt, a short blitz without frothing, then slowly a mild olive oil while blending. The acidity is adjusted with more lemon at the end. It is worth knowing the second half of that decision too: homemade mayonnaise means raw egg, which means 24 to 48 hours in the fridge and nothing more. With shop-bought mayonnaise the salad keeps a little longer, but after the second day the texture is no longer the same.

That leaves the question of how much mayonnaise. „I am a big mayonnaise lover and I like to add a fair amount, but if you want the salad more blended, you will need less of it and more mashing with a fork until everything breaks down”, he says. So the quantity is a choice between a salad where every piece is recognisable and a salad that is one mass.

From there it is an open field: gherkins, olives, peppers, hard-boiled egg, roasted red pepper or pomegranate seeds. None of it is compulsory and that is exactly why the recipe has survived.

Here we call this salad Russian and eat it mostly in winter, usually with whatever is to hand. The prawn version sounds expensive until you remember that the whole point is the water from the shells - the cheapest part of the dish carries the entire difference.