Hiring our City based, commercial kitchens when we don’t offer team-building event’s is a growing side to the business. A large company of Contact Caterers frequently uses The Underground Cookery School to train it’s chef’s. Earlier on this week they had a fish master-class and left us with about a dozen fresh place, some lovely Italian tomatoes, and 12 live crabs which I put to use as follows.
The fish were filleted and we made Goujon’s as canapé for the next day’s Cookery School team-building event, and then used the bones to make a stock. I cooked the crabs in boiling water for about 8 minutes, then removed the white meat and then roasted the rest of the crustacea. After I fried off some onion, garlic, fennel, fennel seeds, star anis, celery and added some brandy; once the alcohol had burnt off, I added some parsley, a bay leaf, a few pepper corn’s and the rest of the crab and shells. These ingredients were covered with the fish stock I’d made earlier and left on a gentle simmer for two hours, adding some saffron and chopped tomatoes. Everything was then passed through a fine chinoise, and the crab bisque reduced down to about 1/3 of its volume. It didn’t need any salt, but I did add a tittle tobacco for background heat. The soup was served in a large pasta bowl and I neatly placed the white crab meat in the middle. A few weeks ago I diced up six cloves of garlic and placed in a jar, covering with extra virgin olive oil. I actually used this to drizzle round the crab and had the most amazing supper!
