MORE PLEASE - CRAB AND GRAB
Slutty Crab, Chorizo and Chip Butties, Crab and Tomato Rice Bowl, White Crab Pizza / Pie
This past New Years Eve we had a veritable seafood feast planned. Oysters, Martinis, Dressed Crab, Bream Carpaccio were all on the menu. And then, the day before NYE, I discovered I was pregnant and we had to pivot hard. Luckily, crab was still “safe” for me to eat so we decided to just focus on that. Crab is happily one of me and my husband’s joint favourite foods. Some of our most memorable meals together have been crab based, and if it’s on a menu you bet we are ordering it. So for our last dinner of 2024, the year we bought a house, got married and got pregnant, it felt like a fitting celebration.
One thing you won’t find me doing often is prepping my own live crabs. If you’ve ever done it before you’ll know that it is kind of a messy hassle. Fun, if you want a kind of messy, hassly style evening (Seafood boils = excellent messy hassle), but normally I just want to skip to the good part. We bought lovely cooked crab from our fishmonger and I dressed it in all the usual good things like lemon, chilli and parsley. I whipped up an aioli and a refreshing salad, and cooked some frozen chips. We then sat down and made ourselves Crab and Chip butties with hot baguettes and it was another great crab meal for the books.
Crab and Chip butties are, for me, the best kind of chip butty (for anyone who is not British reading this - a butty is a sandwich). The luscious sweet crab is such a good friend to the crispy, hot, salty chips in the bread. I am forever making versions of them and today I am sharing a delightfully boujis one - sort of almost thermidor in style with cream and cheddar, but with a bit of fried chorizo in the mix for spice. It’s a really fun date night dinner, or you could make a big batch and do it as a DIY main for your friends.
Having been given a rice cooker for Christmas it has become my absolute favourite kitchen gadget. I was always a big rice gal, but now with my trusty new pal rice bowls have become a bi-weekly dinner. Tomatoes have just come into season and are excellent, and crab and tomatoes are best friends. So this is a luxier than usual rice bowl topped with jammy roasted tomatoes, crab spiced with ginger, spring onions and coriander. Easy and lush.
AND FINALLY. A beautiful White Crab Pie (or Pizza, whatever you want to call it). I am a big fan of a white pizza, and this one topped with marinated crab is seriously, seriously lush. You can adapt the topping recipe to work on a ready-made pizza base or your own dough for an oven or pizza oven. I trust wholeheartedly
recipes on her brilliant weekly newsletter Pizza Every Friday, if you’re looking to make your own.MORE CRAB RECIPES FROM THE ARCHIVE
