PAGE42 - Potted Crab

Sun 10 Feb 2008

Another visit to page 42 - this time from the Complete Traditional Recipe Book. We've had some successes from this book: the cauliflower and almond soup and the plain almond cake, so I had high hopes for page 42 and potted crab. After all, I love shellfish, I love butter and we had some white crab meat left over from a recent sushi sortie.

This is very much a by-taste recipe. I used just under 100g of white crab meat and about 75g of unsalted butter.

Allow your butter to soften (straight from the fridge is a bad idea). In a pan, mix together 1 generous tablespoon of dry or medium sherry with a good squeeze of lemon juice and reduce to about 1 teaspoon. Mix this with the butter, and then add the crab meat, plenty of salt and pepper, and a good pinch of ground ginger. Obviously, you need to taste as you go along. When happy, pack into a ramekin. Looks good, doesn't it?


To finish, melt some butter with a splash of water and some grated lemon rind. Pour this over the crab to seal.

Hmmm. All good in principle. But the fact was, it just wasn't very nice. I'm not going to pretend to be a connoisseur of potted crab (or potted anything to be honest) but this just didn't work for me at all. I had hoped to produce something that would do as a sandwich filling but it was a non-starter. The clarified butter on top tasted a bit like lemon tart but the crab itself (despite frequent adjustment of the seasoning) was pretty tasteless.

Disappointing.

tagged with: crab, potted crab

Stumble It!