Posted on
Friday, June 10, 2011
4:07 PM
| By:
Kitchen Roulette
Category: Posted by Joe
With the crabs in season I mentioned how they would be a great ingredient for our then un-blogged challenge. Lo and behold, they popped up the very next week, on my turn.
Since I wanted to continue to do this 100%, I wanted to get live crabs and clean them myself. After half a dozen Youtube instructional videos, I felt confident enough to let the crabs, whom I had let get too comfortable on my cutting board, have it. Apparently, one of the things that I didn't pay attention to, being more interested in the visceral aspects of the endeavor, was that the crabs start to revive quite a bit if you let them warm up too much. Instead of the easy and conscience-sparing project I saw depicted online, I had headless and flayed crabs thrashing all over the place.
Here's what I did with them when they finally stopped moving: pan fried in brioche crumbs. My original idea was to serve a twist on the typical tempura fried Spider roll you find in sushi joints. I had designs on a Vietnamese style summer roll (with a South American twist) stuffed with arugula salad tossed in a honey lime vinaigrette. The plantains were going to be served in the form of crispy potato pancakes topped with black bean dip and sour cream, based on a few recipes I found online for fried plantain, called pisang goreng.
Unfortunately, no matter how I wrestled and forced and tried to crush the crabs into the rice paper wrappings, the rolls kept tearing open, so what I ended up serving was much less ambitious. I put the salad (which contained arugula, red onion, avocado, cucumber, thai basil, jalapeños and cilantro tossed in the previously mentioned honey lime vinaigrette) on top of the crispy pancake and put the crab on top of it with a dollop of the bean dip in the middle.
Get a load of that thumb print on the side! Damn professional presentation.
This was the first time I have ever had soft shell crabs. The breading on them was delicious. Very crunchy and flavorful. The shell was a bit odd though, kinda papery. But with nothing to compare it to, I don't think it was Joe's fault. The dressing on the salad was well made and all of the ingredients were highlighted. I don't know if the bean dip was necessary though - kinda took over some of the flavor. And from a plating standpoint, the plantain pancake got a good crisp on it, but then it was put it on the bottom, covered with dressing, and got a bit soggy.
-Jason