Potted Crab

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About this Recipe

I worked in the kitchen of Newport House in Newport, Co. Mayo when I was just a lass. This is a Relais Chateau Hotel, with it’s own gardens, hens and even their own smoke house. It was a summer job while I was still at school. They were great great times. I was to ‘help out’, and was tutored and encouraged by the talented and very very funny chef John Gavin. Everything I learned there I still remember, I was like a sponge, gladly soaking up any information I was given. It was also mad crack. Some of the amazing people who I met there are no longer with us, but they made that hotel a beautiful and sunny place to be, people like Owen Mullins, Margaret English, Bobby the Gardner, and of course Chef and Catherine who are still there.

Some of my tasks were to make the sandwiches for the picnic baskets, (in which someone found a hair at least once!), the fruit cakes (one day I forgot the fruit!) and to shell the crab. Two four stone bags of crab claws would arrive into the back kitchen. Chef would make me a little black dress from a bin liner and hand me a hammer and a pick. Hours later the white & pink meat was ready for Chef. We’d put it into a stainless steel bowl and give it a whirl around, any rogue shell would make a little noise and be found out. And I’d be sent home to take a bath!

Proper potted Crab is made with butter, but this isn’t proper potted Crab, this is my version of it. It’s light and lovely and great with a glass of dry sherry. Instead of melted butter, I use a homemade mayo.

Ingredients

• 300g Crab meat (you can mix the brown meat with the white meat for a stronger flavour)
• 1 med Shallot, chopped very finely
• 4 tblsp Manzanilla Sherry
• Pinch Cayenne Pepper
• Pinch Freshly Grated Nutmeg
• Tiny Pinch White pepper
• 1 egg Separate the yolk & keep the white
• Some light sunflour oil
• A little lemon juice
• 2 tsp Anchovy Essence

Method

Use a large mixing bowl and a whisk. Put the yolk in the bowl, add a teaspoon of lemon juice, now add the oil, a little at a time until you have a little bit of mayo.Whisk the egg white, till fluffy, and fold it into the mayo mixture.Now fold in the crab meat.

Put the onion and the sherry in a pot, and reduce the sherry by ½. Pass this through a sieve, pusing the onions so that their juices come through.

Mix this into the crab mixture. Flavour with Anchovy Essence. Season with white pepper, nutmeg and a little cayenne. You won’t need salt in this recipe, as we’re putting melted butter on top to keep the pots fresh for a couple of days.

Put the crab mixture into ramekins, you’ll need about six for this recipe. Then melt some butter in the microwave. Let it settle a bit and all the white stuff will fall to the bottom of the jug. Just use the yellow golden liquid on the top. The white stuff is the salt, and the top liquid is the clarified butter. This lasts much longer than normal butter and can be used to fry, as it’s smoke point is higher than the normal butter.

Serve the potted Crab with toasted soda bread and some lovely leaves, like summer purslane.