Crabs

Just got back from holiday in Lymington. Lovely apartment on the quay. 6-8 of us in residence (some coming and going of participants over the fortnight). This is pretty much the view out of our window, if from a different angle

Still waiting for someone to fall in. Never seems to happen though.


From another window we can see

Hello, I only open occasionally, but I'm worth it


the little seafood stall down the cobbled street, next to the ice cream kiosk. It only opens Thur – Sun, from 10.00ish or so.

So come Saturday morning, I am sitting in the bay window, half reading and half watching the seafood stall shutter. About 10.10, up goes the shutter. I’m at the stall about one minute later, and there’s already a small queue. It is run, as far as I have been able to ascertain, by the wives of two crab/lobster fishermen.

One of them is giving the display cabinet a quick wipe, and blocking my view of the fantastic fresh crabs stacked up at one end. I crane my head to look round her.

“Shall I pose for you?” she says

“Oh..ah..haha…no, I was trying to look at your crabs”

“Oh, aren’t I worth looking at then?”

“Er..yes..I mean no…I mean…” and we all have a good laugh.

The crabs are all chalked up with numbers on them: 4.35, 5.50, 7.40 etc, indicating the price, but when I came a few years ago, my young son said, “is that the time they caught the crabs?”

So whenever I buy a crab from them nowadays the conversation goes something like “can I have one caught about 5.30?”

“how about this one, it’s a bit later: about quarter to seven. That OK?” (funny they never suggest getting an earlier one, always later!).

Then she said, “cock or hen?”

“I beg your parden?”

“Boy or girl?”

“Er…I’m not sure I know the difference” (titters all round. Cries of, “I thought you had kids?”). I then receive, in front of many interested bystanders, an impromptu sex lesson on crabs. Apparently, boy crabs have bigger claws, and hence more white meat, and girl crabs have smaller claws, but bigger body cavities to hold the eggs, and hence more dark meat. I prefer dark meat, so I came home with the freshest, pretty hefty, and beautiful looking girl crab.

Stuck it in the fridge, then we went off for a wander round the Saturday market that stretches way up the high street.




'Ow abaat a cauliflower love? Only one left...



I have absolutely no idea what I am selling


Got a jigsaw for any rainy days, the Sunday joint from a market butcher, shouting and screaming. A huge pork rib, enough for about 8 – 10 (here you go mate: call it a tenner). Then all the fresh veg for the roast – potatoes, leeks, carrots, fresh peas in the pod, cabbage etc etc, plus masses or fruit: cherries, strawberries, greengages, plums, nectarines, and lots of great salad items. Also a few other useless items one always somehow acquires in a market, then back for lunch.

While the others laid the table with newly acquired pickles (cider apple chutney v good), and cheeses (the Afterburner cheddar with chillies was exactly as stated), fresh sourdough bread, some deli meats, and a huge mixed salad, I got cracking – literally – with my crab. It’s time consuming, fiddly getting all that lovely crabmeat out of all the crevisses, and downright dangerous as bits of razor sharp shell fly about as you whack the rolling pin down on the claws.

But I love it, and after about half an hour of hard graft, you are looking at a bowl of pristine, fresh, light and delicate sweet tasting white crabmeat, and another bowl of fantastically creamy and wonderfully rich and tasty dark crabmeat: one of God’s great gifts to mankind as far as I am concerned.

I then made a tien of crab: mixed some of the white and dark meat together with a little mayonnaise, finely chopped spring onion, fresh black pepper, and half a finely diced avocado. Shaped it into a round, and served.

Yes. Mine looked more like a dull green splat on a plate, but I forgot to take a photo

Gigantic sandwich made from thickly sliced fresh sourdough bread, plenty of unsalted butter, lettuce, thick layer of crab, and a smear of apple cider chutney. Crisp mixed salad, and a plum tomato salad with mozzarella.

Perfection.


However, perfection looked like it could be improved upon, as a passerby on the quay whispered to me that I could get the crabs from the same place the seafood kiosk got them: fresher and cheaper.


To be continued...