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.
