This simple and delicious fresh crab and pea salad is full of spring goodness! Fresh herbs, a splash of olive oil and a little lemon juice and Tobasco are about all you need to dress this salad. If you're not up to cleaning your own crab, have your fish monger do it for you. This is the perfect salad for a light meal or to serve for brunch. Watch the video below to see how easy it is to make this crab salad.
Fresh Crab and Pea Salad
1 2-pound crab or 2 smaller crabs, cooked
2 tbsp plus 1tsp olive oil
2 tsp Knorr Vegetable Touch of Taste
Squeeze of lemon juice
1/2 pound fresh peas, shelled
Dash of white wine vinegar
Few drops of Tabasco sauce
Fresh basil, chives and parsley to garnish
Click here for the full instructions.
From Chef Marco Pierre White: "One of my favorite dishes in the summer is fresh crab - fresh crab with fresh peas, delicious, and herbs, very simple, no real technical ability. So crabs, this is a hen crab, weighed about a kilo, took me about 10 minutes to cook. And when I cook a crab or a lobster and bring them out of the water I always present them upside down, keep the juices inside the crab. So as you can see, so we take off the legs, take off the claws, then the body, just push that out, there we are, there’s the body. So we take the brown meat, scrape the brown meat out with a spoon as you will see. It’s always good to take your brown crab meat and just put it into a sieve just to drain some of the water out, then we can chop that rough later and just season it up a little bit. The prize bit for many people is the meat from the claws. So the easy way of doing it, take the back of the spoon, just scrape that out. Just by taking that little bit longer you get no shell in your crab. So with this cloth, just crack it open, forget the big piece of shell. Again, just feel with your fingers, you’ll see the blade in the middle and these little claws, we use for garnish. With the shells you can freeze them down, collect them, make a little bisque of crab or a little seafood soup. They’re good, never waste them. Never throw them away."
"With the white meat, very simple, tiny bit of lemon juice, tiny bit of Touch of Taste vegetable. And I prefer to use Touch of Taste than salt because when you sprinkle it with salt it sticks, it absorbs. So it’s pretty easy to season crab unevenly. And a tiny bit of olive oil. Okay, if we take some freshly cooked peas, you can use frozen if you wish but fresh are very easy, some olive oil, Touch of Taste, vinegar - white wine vinegar. We take our brown meat. You could put herbs through your crab but I prefer to put them over the top. And then here’s the pincers which I’m just going to use for garnish. Some fresh basil which works very well with peas, soft herbs really, some fresh chives, a little bit of coriander, a little bit of parsley, whatever, just soft herbs, a tiny bit of crystal salt, just a little lemon juice and there’s our pea salad with fresh herbs and fresh crab. And egg mayonnaise would be delicious with it. You could serve mayonnaise on the side with it, some potato salad with the new season’s potatoes. Keep it simple, as you saw then, peas, crab, lemon juice, olive oil, herbs, that’s all it is. No shell in the crab, guaranteed." Continue watching here.
