PAGE 96 SOFT SHELL CRAB WITH POLENTA CRUST AND CORN PUREE

Awesome day, the Marines of Maintenance Section won best booth at the DoD maintenance symposium.  Shout out to Mike, Eric, Tony, Jim, Mark, Vic, Wade and Sam! And watched the Grease episode of Glee on HULU, who can not like Glee?   Back to making delicious food after a detour of stuffed squid.  These may have been the best soft shell crabs I have ever had, and I am an affecienado of soft shell crabs (have lived in MD for 28 years, baby!)  I had a box of frozen soft shell crabs.  I had made a couple previously  but thought they were watery.  That is, until Mike's recipe hit my hands!

I soaked the crabs in buttermilk and squeezed out the excess fluid.  This may be what kept them from being watery.  I heated vegetable oil in a skillet.  I combined polenta, flour, coriander, salt, pepper and cayenne and rolled the crabs in it.  No problem, so far.  I fried the crabs in the oil until golden.  It took like 5 minutes per crab.  Mike suggested serving on a corn puree, so I went for it.  Of course, I had to dice half an onion>  If I get nothing else out of this experiment, I will be a champion onion dicer.  Sweated it while slicing the kernels off of 2 ears of corn.  Added corn to the sweating onion (great name for a band, maybe?)   Added chicken broth and saffron, cooked for awhile, then added cream and salt and cooked some more.  I plated the crabs on the corn puree.  Very tasty!  Tomorrow I will write about my experience with chicken feet.

Delicious soft shell crab!

  Another picture of crab.  You can see the zested lime on top, how cool.