Crabs and crabmeatOnline Catalogue | Shellfish | Crabs and crabmeat |  | A guide to buying whole crabs compared to buying crab meat.Just follow the pictures below to see how to deal with a whole crab - this is how it will arrive if you have ticked the box above to ask for your crab to be opened and the claws cracked. There is nothing poisonous in a crab (tradition has it that the gills are poisonous, they are not, it's just that they are unpleasant), but we will remove anything you won't want. It's obvious what bits you don't eat (for example the shell!), just take the brown meat out of the body and the white meat out of the claws. This is the best way of enjoying a crab. Enjoy!
|  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | A recipe for a crab flanHeat your oven to 180°C. gas 4. Line a cake tin (17-20cm in diameter) with baking parchment. Don't bother to cut it to fit, just push it down into the corners. Gently put a defrosted ready rolled short pastry circle over the tin, and gently push the pastry down into the tin. If any holes appear just push a spare bit of pastry on to glue the hole together. Line the pastry with another piece of baking parchment (push it down into the corners of the tin as before), so the pastry is between two pieces of baking parchment. Fill the tin with some baking beans or uncooked rice, then cook for about 10 minutes. Cooking for this 10 minutes without the filling will mean the pastry will turn out crisp and not soggy. During the 10 minutes get ready your filling: the crab meat of course, plus some grated cheddar, or crumbled feta, or cooked fried onions (use the tinned ones for speed), some grilled peppers in oil (drained), some sweetcorn, whatever you fancy. Beat up 3 smallish eggs with a couple of tablespoons of milk and some herbs. After the 10 minutes are over, take the cake tin out of the oven, take out the inner baking parchment with the baking beans, and carefully trim the pastry with a sharp knife. Fill the case with your chosen ingredients to nearly the top, pour over the egg, leaving about a cm of unfilled pastry to allow the egg to rise a bit. Bake for a further 30 minutes or so, until the filling is set. It will continue cooking after you take it out of the oven, so don't be too strict on time. Serve with a salad and some new potatoes, and a red onion or other chutney.
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