Friday, March 30, 2012

FFwD - Crab and Grapefruit Salad



This week's French Fridays with Dorie recipe was a rather unusual Crab and Grapefruit Salad.  At first, this did not appeal to me, as it contained raw chilli, onion and capsicum.  However, when I tasted the finished product, I was pleasantly surprised - the grapefruit and vegetables melded beautifully with crab, resulting in what would be a very elegant starter at a dinner party.

I have never cooked a crab before, so approached it with trepidation.  This is my blue swimmer crab prior to cooking:



Handsome, isn't he?  His lovely blue coat turns red as soon as he is added to the pot of boiling water (to which I added brown sugar and salt at the suggestion of a website):




Here is the crab, all cooked and sitting in a sinkful of cold water to halt the cooking process:


I found a Youtube video on how to shell a crab.  After removing the top plate (called the carapice, if you are interested), you break the crab in half:


Then you crack open the claws and shell to remove the meat, in my case using a nut cracker.  After all that, this was all the crab meat that resulted: 



Sigh ...  Oh well, it was a surprisingly good salad.

Visit the LYL section of the FFwD website to see what everyone else thought of this dish.

21 comments:

  1. That looks great, the first and only time I made crab I screamed like hell and i had no idea how to eat them after hahaha
    http://bakinginspain.blogspot.com.es/2012/02/soggy-rice-with-crab.html

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  2. You're brave! Although I like eating crab, I don't think I could work up the courage to cook it.
    The salad sounds delicious and something I would totally like. :)

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  3. Wow, you even cooked your own crab. I am glad I was able to get mine already shelled & ready to use. Whew.
    Looks lovely.

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  4. It does sound good :) I would have assumed that those ingredients raw might have overpowered the crab but good to hear that it was delicious! :)

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  5. We live in land locked Utah so I have never cooked fresh crab. When my daughter lived in Australia--Ulladulla to be exact she was right on the coast. She had the best sea food ever, what a treat. I need to try this dish.

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  6. OMG, kudos for actually boiling and making your own crab. I punked out and used pre-shelled lump crab meat.

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  7. Oh I'm so jealous that you were able to find fresh crab. He certainly is handsome! But crazy how little meat you get out of that big guy.

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  8. We also enjoyed this salad, but we probably would have enjoyed it more with fresh crab meat. What a beautiful crab! So glad you enjoyed this one. I was also pleasantly surprised that I liked it so much.

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  9. Wow…I’m impressed! Cooking your own crab! I bought a can of lump crab meat. However, the salad was delicious! Have a great weekend!

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  10. He was no longer with us when I bought him Duckie - someone else did the deed.

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  11. What a lovely salad (though you were probably hoping for a larger one.) I'm not sure I could have cooked and cleaned a crab for this one, but you made it sound easy!

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  12. I took the easy way out and opened a can :) But I bet your crab was even better...so glad you enjoyed, too!

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  13. First of all, it's Friday night. Date night. Mark asked if I wanted to go out this evening to a movie or something and I said, "Thanks so much, but can I have a raincheck as I am behind in reading Gaye's blog times 15 and if I don't catch up soon she will no longer be speaking to me." So here I go, be prepared for your inbox to be full of wordy little comments about all your cooking/baking/living! This salad looks wonderfully beautiful and delicious to me. Just so pretty! The saga of the Little Blue Crab Who Turned to Red was interesting and fun as well as I have never cooked my own before, much less ripped him apart and find all the goodies, so now I think I might be able to do that. Thanks for the tutorial!

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  14. I'm so impressed that you cooked a whole crab! I think I would have just bought some crabmeat!

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  15. I'm so impressed with your cooking project! The blue crab is so pretty, when you come to San Francisco you will need to try our Dungeness crab which is also very good;-) Sounds like this salad was a winner!

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  17. I'm impressed that you cooked a crab for this salad. Crabs are not hanging out much in our desert. unless they are lost, so we can choose from frozen, canned, or something really expensive. But I enjoyed this salad anyway, with a few changes. Hubby is from the East Coast and used to go crabbing, so he would be jealous of your crab. Nice to learn new things. I learned that grapefruit and crab go well together, and you learned to cook a crab. Good for us!

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  18. Wow! You started with a live crab. Very brave, and I'm sure you had the most delicious salad of us all. Nice work!

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  19. OMG wow that's so impressive you used live crab and cooked it yourself!! :D I d never be able to do that :) i get a little scared of it when it moves hehe ~ yum yum salad :D

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  20. You are so dedicated! I don't think I could have handle the disappointment of not enjoying the salad if I had gone to all the work of cooking and shelling the crab!!

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Thanks for dropping by!