The seafood of the Gods

(Two hours before I took this picture these two were minding their own business on the sea bed, but were silly enough to crawl into my lobster pots and so end up in my fish kettle - sorry if you're squeamish, but it's the way the world goes round folks!)

Crab Pie

Once experienced, this 19th century Cornish recipe for crab pie is never forgotten.  It is a seafood meal to die for and to serve it more than once per season would do it a grave injustice so I cook it just once each summer for special friends. To serve 4 this is what you need:

2 large, live cock crabs
¼ tsp fresh grated nutmeg
½ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground ginger
2 tbsp light red wine, (a claret is fine) 
2oz butter
3 artichoke bottoms (tinned will do or fresh boiled to stick to the original)
3 hard boiled eggs
2 dozen white grapes, (seedless these days or pitted to stick to the original)
½ lb asparagus tips boiled to just tender
Juice of 1 orange
¼ lb best Cornish clotted cream
12oz puff pastry
1 egg yolk beaten
Freshly ground sea salt & freshly ground pepper

Boil the crabs and remove all the claw meat. Mix the rest of the crab meat with the nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon and wine and set aside.  Butter a pie dish, put in the artichoke bottoms and on them put the chopped eggs, then the spiced crab meat, then the grapes and asparagus tips.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper and pour in the orange juice. Spread the cream on top and press all the crab claw meat into the cream.  Roll out the pastry, cover the pie dish with it and press down the edges and trim of the excess pastry. Brush with the beaten egg yolk.  Bake in an oven pre heated to 230ºC for 25 minutes and serve immediately onto piping hot plates accompanied by nothing more than your favourite cold drink. Personally, I love this meal with a glass of cold Cornish real ale, but your favourite chilled, crisp white wine would be just as good.

What not to do with a fresh lobster

I think it's criminal to take what is probably the finest sea food available, a lobster, and serve it smothered in some ghastly pink cheese sauce with a fancy name or got up in some other disguise which gets you a prize if you can see that it's actually a lobster.  No, for me the simplest lobster meals are the best; if it's cooked as in the picture above then there is no better thing to do than eat it outside in the sunshine with nothing more than a squeeze of lemon juice and a fresh green salad, but for simplicity itself this takes some beating and is my favourite lobster recipe, if recipe you can call it! Take a live 1½ to 2lb lobster and kill the creature instantly by plunging a 12" cook's knife sharply through the cross on the top of its head.  Cut it in half lengthwise and remove the inedible bits, (the feathery gills and the greenish sac from the head, and the black or green thread which runs the length of the body).  Pre-heat a grill, place the lobster flesh side up on a grilling tray seasoned with salt and pepper, a few knobs of butter and the briefest squeeze of fresh lemon juice and cook under the hot grill for 8 to 10 minutes, then turn and grill shell side up for a further 5 minutes.  Place the grilled lobster on a plate and sprinkle it with a little cayenne pepper.  Set the table with a bowl of melted butter and lemon juice, a crisp green salad and/or some very fresh crusty bread, fill a large cut glass goblet with a perfectly chilled Pouilly fumé, unplug the telephone, throw the mobile out of the window, hang the 'gone fishing' sign on the front door and with your bone-handled lobster fork begin, and let the world pass you by for an hour.