Photo credit: © Eatwell101.com
For a drink or verrine appetizers, your glasses won’t be more useful! In autumn, season of fennel and celery, these ingredients come together with crab to make this nice verrine appetizer. Both fresh, iodine and light, it will wake your appetite up. Optionally, you can choose your crab on the shelf and cook, but you might broke your heart to plunge it alive into boiling water! So cooked clips are now available on the shelves of fishmongers. There will be more than the shell.
Ingredients: crab and fennel verrine
For 8 glasses:
- 2 crabs alive (or 1kg of cooked crab clips, just skip the first steps of the recipe)
- 1 cube of fish stock
- 1 onion
- 1/2 lb (225 g) of celery
- 3 1/2 ounces (100 g) diced fennel
- 1 3/4 tablespoon (25 g) butter, 2 slices of bread crumbs
- Olive oil
- Thyme
- 1 Bay Leaf
Preparation: Crab and fennel verrine
Bring a large pot of water to boil with the fish stock, bay leaf and thyme. Dip the crabs. Allow to cook for 30 minutes. Drain, collect the juice and cooled crabs. Break the shells and collect the crab’s flesh.
Peel, chop and sweat the onion in a large saucepan with a little oil. Add celery and fennel, cut into small cubes. Mix and simmer 5 minutes. Then cover with 2 cups (50 cl) from the crab broth. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Bake for 30 minutes at a simmer. Blend this mixture in your blender and preferably 5 minutes late for a smooth and creamy paste. Finally, add the butter. Allow to cool.
Remove crust from bread. Cut into small cubes. In a skillet, heat a good drizzle of oil and a good knob of butter. Bake the croutons over medium heat until golden brown. Add oil if necessary. Drain and put the croutons on paper towels.
Pour the cream of fennel in glass jars, add the crab meat, croutons and garnish with some chives.
My advice:
For a finer result, also try the spider crab whose flesh is more fine and fragrant (and more expensive…)
Crab and fennel verrine
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