Phil Fanning owns and is executive chef at the Michelin starred Paris House in Woburn. His cooking is contemporary with layers of taste from unusual ingredients and an eye for theatrical mischief. The recipes he has created using our crispbread for Great British Chefs are relatively complex but we hope that you will find some interesting flavour combinations that will inspire you to try something a little different.
You can watch Phil making this dish on our YouTube channel here.
Cooking Time: 2 hours (plus 1 week to pickle and 4 hours drying)
Serves 6
Ingredients:
4 cucumbers, baby ridgeback
200g of water
200g of rice wine vinegar
200g of sugar
1 tsp malt extract
1 shallot, finely sliced
1 bay leaf
1 tsp dill seeds
1 sprig of tarragon
Picked crab
1kg cock crab
4kg water
35g of malt extract
Crab oil
Vegetable oil
Brown crab tapioca crisps
50g of tapioca pearls
1 tsp malt extract
2 pinches of fennel pollen
325g of fish stock
Oil, for deep-frying
Crab mayonnaise
20g of pasteurised egg yolk
7g of lemon juice
7g of malt extract
5g of Dijon mustard
1 pinch of fennel pollen
To serve
12 medium crispbread, 10cm, preferably Peter’s Yard
Edible flowers or micro herbs (optional)
Method:
- Make a pickle by boiling the water, vinegar, sugar and malt in a pan, adding the shallot, bay, dill and tarragon and leaving to cool. Add to a jar with the cucumbers, seal and leave for a week
- For the crab, in a large pan boil the malt and water, add the crab and cover with a lid. When boiling, reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes
- Remove the crab and refresh in iced water. Once cool, crack open the shell and remove the body and leg meat (watch out for small pieces of shell), keeping the empty shells to one side for the oil
- Preheat the oven to 100°C/gas mark ¼
- Pick out the brown meat from the head, spread on a baking mat and dry out in the oven. Remove and set aside. Increase the temperature to 180°C/gas mark 4
- Crush the reserved shell into small pieces and toast in the oven for 40 minutes
- Place in a small pan, cover with vegetable oil and heat to 80°C for about 1 hour (to infuse the oil with the crab shell flavour). Set aside to cool
- Cook the tapioca in boiling water for 16 minutes, drain and cool. Add half of this to a food processor with the malt extract, pollen and dried out brown meat
- Mix together, adding enough fish stock to make a thick paste and finally mix through the remaining cooked tapioca
- Spread this thinly on a baking mat and dry out in a cool oven (you may need to flip over halfway through)
- Preheat a deep-fryer to 180°C, fry broken pieces of the dried tapioca sheet until puffed up, drain excess oil on kitchen towel and season to taste
- Blitz the egg yolk, lemon juice, malt and mustard in a blender then slowly add 120ml of the crab oil until it emulsifies
- Mix a little of this mayonnaise with the reserved crab meat, a little extra lemon juice, the pollen and salt to taste
- When ready to serve, place some of this crab meat mix on a cracker/crispbread and tope with some ribbons and cubes of the pickled cucumber, a tapioca crisp, some dollops of the mayonnaise and edible flowers (optional)
Recipe courtesy of www.greatbritishchefs.com
