Crab Towers
We knew we wanted something light for dinner, and I wanted to use up the chipotle mayonnaise that I’d made for a picnic last week, so I thought I’d try to tackle the Crab Towers with Avocado & Gazpacho Salsas from America’s Test Kitchen.
I ended up deviating from the recipe in quite a few areas:
- For the crab salad, I just used my homemade chipotle mayo and added lime juice and a little salt and pepper, rather than adding mustard and lemon zest.
- In order to stay with the same theme as the chipotle, I went with a little ground cumin in the avocados’ lime juice rather than coriander. (Also, I had ground cumin in a jar and didn’t feel like grinding coriander seed. I am shamed.)
- I left the celery (because I forgot) and the jalepeno (because Rachel doesn’t like spicy, and we already had the chipotle mayo) out of the gazpacho salsa. I did make sure to use sherry vinegar, though, which is really great stuff. Don’t fall back on red wine vinegar, it won’t be the same.
Also, Rachel found some freshly cooked lobster tails at the seafood counter, and even though they were ridiculously expensive they made a crab and lobster salad that was out of this world. Oh, and the grocery store didn’t have frisee, so I used watercress. Came out pretty delicious, although I had trouble getting the tower to hold together. The top layer didn’t really compress all that well, and tended to scatter if I wasn’t careful.
I wouldn’t make it every day, but it was a treat.
(And, man, if I’d known Rachel was going to take such a food porn-y picture of them, I’d have sprinkled some kind of Emerilesque bam-age around the plates.)
On Sunday, when we were deciding what we’d be eating for dinner this week, Matt suggested “some kind of crab salad” for one night. He wanted to use up some mayo or something…I’m not good with food details. I expected lettuce, maybe some red onion, some kind of dressing, and some crab. (Matt, please do not point out that I was the one who shopped for every ingredient in the salad and that perhaps I could have made a more educated guess based on the items I purchased off the shopping list. As I said above, food details = not so much my thing.)
While he was preparing our meal last night I was in the living room, contributing to the well-being of our relationship in my own way (giving unreliable play-by-play of the Sox game, if I remember correctly). When Matt announced that dinner was ready, I walked into the kitchen and stopped abruptly, mid-sentence, when I saw the plated food. It looked like 5-star restaurant fare. It TASTED like 5-star restaurant fare. I was pleasantly stunned. The man is amazing, folks. And allow me to be the first to break the news to you: he is not available.
Thanks for the great dinner, babe!
July 19th. I think I was having grilled cheese and apple juice that day…