Crab Salade

If you just say crab salad, it sounds like the crabby equivalent of tuna salad. But I feel that if you add that "e" -ooh, la, la, salaaaddeee- your mind is directed into a fancier direction. Frankly, with the delicate wonder that is lump crab meat, you should go fancy. Not nuts, definitely simple, but decidedly highbrow! Yesterday at the market, I picked up a tub of jumbo lump crab meat. I'm always shocked by the price, but if you've ever caught and then steamed and picked clean crabs, you'd want to charge someone a lot too. I get it. So I bought my tub and noodled on a springy salad with crab as the star. The lettuces in my garden this year are a tender buttercrunch and an equally sweet black-seeded Simpson; those plus some fresh tarragon leaves, diced celery and slivered celery leaves would make a beautiful base for the salade.

I also plucked two baby radishes and one tiny carrot, added the tender leaves to the bowl of greens and shaved the bulbs on top.

Then to the crab. I made a simple dijonnaise of mayo and Dijon mustard, added a good bit of fresh lemon juice and some salt and fresh pepper. I gently folded in the crab, spooned it onto the bed of greens and sprinkled capers all around. Meanwhile, I'd toasted some pain de campagne, a lovely, chewy sourdoughy bread and put out some good butter.

We ate well, watched an episode of 24, and called it a day.

Crabvocado towers for lunch

Not bad, not bad. I just made this recipe up and while it needs some tweaking, it's definitely got potential. I needed to use up a gorgeous pound of lump crabmeat I'd bought for father's day but not used, and I wanted a delicate base on which to showcase it. Here in the kitch I had some spring onions, fennel, avocados and a couple Yukon gold potatoes. What about a chilled stack of some blend of those items with crab salad as the pinnacle? I steamed the potatoes, then chilled and sliced them into thin rounds. I sliced the avocado in the same manner -minus the chilling- and mandolined a Gold Rush apple for a sweet crunch. I stacked those in alternating layers and then topped them with chilled crab salad; this I'd made by sauteing diced spring onions and fennel in butter, Dijon, salt and a little white wine. For the final touch, I made a mayo-Dijon-whey sauce which I drizzled over the towers and then the whole thing got dusted with fennel fronds. I say this was a pretty good lunch for a random Tuesday. And almost best of all, I had one piece of plum tart left for the finale. Aah!