Crab Meat with Mint and Orange Salad
Ingredients
500g cooked crab meat
6 sticks of fresh celery
6 oranges
grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
juice of 1 orange
6 tablespoons olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper
handful of fresh mint leaves
Description
This is a terrific zingy-tasting starter if you can get fresh crab meat. I love the fresh crabs we often gather in traps not far from our beach house, but it’s terrifically hard work and always seems to take ages to shell the crabs and extract enough meat. Luckily you can buy Waikanae crab meat from a good fish supplier, and fresh crayfish meat can always be substituted for a similar taste. There are great textures in this dish, as the celery adds crunch to the crab and the orange supplements the juiciness.
Method
Pick over the crab meat, removing any shell. Finely slice the celery into thin diagonals. Peel the oranges with a knife, removing all the white pith. Cut between each orange segment and remove the glistening orange flesh from the membranes or pale ‘skins’ that encase each segment. Set the orange flesh aside, discarding the membranes. Put the crab and celery in a bowl and add the grated lemon zest.
Make a dressing by combining the lemon and orange juice with olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Carefully fold the dressing through the crab and celery.
Chop the mint into shreds and add this and the orange segments to the crab mixtures.
To serve, pile the crab salad onto serving plates and add a wedge of simple pizza-style bread to each plate.
Categories
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