Sufolk food writer Nicola Miller compares a crab to a Marvel superhero

I don’t think anyone writes about the preparation and eating of crab as well as the poet Sharon Olds does. From her description of its meat as ‘‘upright flakes white as the flesh of a chrysanthemum” to the “delicate hooked pulp” of claw meat, she captures the fragility and strength of the crab — its light and dark in a manner of speaking. The crabs about which Olds writes were bought by her mother, who would wait patiently while the crab man cracked the shells down by the bay before returning home to unhouse the flesh “like a fish-hawk, wild, tearing the meat deftly” as her children waited, hungrily.

There’s something fantastically feral about cleaning and breaking down a fresh crab. Even if you didn’t catch and kill them, preparing a crab to eat is atavistically intimate; there’s no way of distancing oneself from the task’s visceral nature. It is messy, fiddly, and anatomical. Breaching its carapace feels like a victory, especially considering the effort and skill required to get at the small amount of meat inside its disarticulated legs. Crab is delectable, so we put the effort in. “It was such a kick to easily eat that weapon,” Olds writes about claw meat. I know exactly what she means.

The crab is an arthropod which makes it sound like a Marvel superhero (or villain). In my head, the word is always capitalised: ARTHROPOD!!!! Marvel’s crab superhero is the unimaginatively named King Crab. DC Comics’ version is slightly better; they went for Cancero, the Electrical Crab Man. There’s a great scene in the movie Thunderforce where The Crab (played by Jason Bateman) is annoyed when a waiter at Trader Vics recommends the petite seafood tower as he dines with Lydia (Melissa McCarthy). Bateman waves his proportionately large, human-sized claws in distress: “I got bit on the ballbag by a radioactive crab, and I used to love shellfish, so my fuse is a little short.” “I am so sorry, sir,’ the waiter responds. “I didn’t see your pincers.”

While we’re on the subject of giant claws, the Robber Crabs of Christmas Island can grow to 1.5m long. It’s kind of hard to miss their Bateman-esque claws and pincers. Robber Crabs adore coconuts and climb trees to get at them, eat carrion, prey on hatchlings, steal things (they’re basically the magpies of the seashore), and have lots of sweet, edible flesh. They even eat their exoskeletons after shedding. But as delicious as these crabs are, they are protected in many places, so I wouldn’t recommend eating them should you decide to holiday on Christmas Island instead of Crete or Clacton next year.

In East Anglia (the considerably smaller), Walberswick and Felixstowe Ferry crabs grow fat on scraps of bacon from holiday crabbers. The Cromer Crab (Cancer pagarus) scuttles about the northern coast of Norfolk and feeds in the shallower nutrient-rich waters that rise and fall over the seabed’s flint and chalk shelf. Like most of its kin, the brown crab of Cromer is a feisty creature if cornered but does its level best to keep out of the way of humans. All it wants to do is patrol its territory, mate, and look for delicious things to eat. Unlike the Robber Crab, which, records tell us, has pilfered silverware, the discarded shoes of tourists, and, once, a rifle from a soldier on exercise, it is less of a kleptomaniac. (Yes, I am anthropomorphising here.)

Crabs from Cromer are said to have a higher ratio of white to brown meat and a heightened sweetness, which may be a consequence of their slower growth rate. So delicious are they that if you have never eaten one, your first time should involve nothing more than thickly buttered fluffy white bread filled with a mixture of white and brown meat, seasoned with salt and pepper. Crab sandwiches are best eaten outdoors; fresh air suits their scent and flavour and sharpens your appetite.

Baked crab smothered in a delicious sauce is (possibly) the next best way to serve it, although crabby rice is right up there too. On a recent trip to Aylsham in Norfolk to attend a friend’s book launch, we stopped for a drink at the Black Boys Hotel on Market Square. When I saw Baked Cromer Crab Thermidor with Gnocchi on its menu, what came to mind were the smothered crab Creole-style dishes I ate in New Orleans, a city where the concept of too much butter, seafood, cream, cheese, and alcohol doesn’t exist.

SPICY CRAB AND GNOCCHI ‘THERMIDOR’

Makes enough for two to share as a main or a starter for four people.

Ingredients:

500g bag fresh potato gnocchi

20g unsalted butter

Two large shallots, very finely chopped

450ml fish stock (home or ready-made)

50ml Noilly Prat (or other dry Vermouth)

100ml double cream

A third of a teaspoon English mustard

A third of a teaspoon Creole or Cajun seasoning

Half a teaspoon finely chopped tarragon

1 teaspoon finely chopped chives + an extra-large pinch for garnishing

1 teaspoon freshly-squeezed lemon juice

The meat from 1 large dressed crab

20g finely grated parmesan

Salt to taste

Method:

Three quarters-fill a large saucepan with salted water and bring to a boil. Add the gnocchi to the pan in batches (not all at once) and cook until they float to the surface. This will take around 3 minutes but keep an eye on them. Remove the pan from the heat, use a slotted spoon to lift the gnocchi from the water, drain well, and put them on a plate covered with a piece of kitchen roll. Cover very loosely with more kitchen roll. Don’t use plastic film because trapping residual heat will steam them into sogginess, and you don’t want that.

Melt the butter in a heavy-based medium-sized pan over low-medium heat, add the shallots and cook until soft and lightly golden in colour. Stir them regularly to reduce the risk of scorching. This will take around ten minutes. Pour over the stock, Noilly Prat and half the cream and bring this mixture to a boil. Then lower the heat, stir and simmer until the sauce is thick and reduced in volume by two-thirds. I use a silicon spatula to stir creamy sauces because they scrape up every little bit from the base of the pan.

Add the rest of the cream to the sauce and, once more, bring it to a boil. Turn the heat down a little and allow the sauce to blip gently for ten more minutes. Keep stirring. Now whisk in the mustard, Creole seasoning, tarragon, chives and lemon juice and turn on your grill so it gets really hot. Taste and season the sauce with more salt if necessary.

Place an even layer of cooked gnocchi in your baking dish. Top it with the crab meat and thoroughly combine. Now pour over the sauce. Sprinkle the parmesan cheese on top and place the dish under the hot grill until your sauce and cheese are molten, gold, and crisp around the edges. Again, keep a careful watch on proceedings; the time between perfect and burned is short. Garnish with more finely-chopped chives and serve with bread for dipping and green salad.

NOTES:
Let’s not kid ourselves that there’s anything classic about my version. A classic lobster Thermidor uses cognac or brandy, but I prefer the flavour of Noilly Prat (or another brand of dry vermouth) with crab. For ease of prep, I buy ready-prepared crabs (‘dressed’) from the local fish van, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t dress them yourself. In a classic Thermidor, you would return the crustacean meat and sauce to the shell before grilling. I use an ovenproof baking dish instead. If you can’t get hold of Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning or Slap Ya Mama’s version (both are sold online) - look for seasoning mixes by Terre Exotique (via Sous Chef), Barts Spices or Seasoned Pioneers. You’ll come across supermarket own-brands, too; they will do fine. Cajun seasoning has a more peppery, spicy kick than the more herbal Creole, but you can substitute one for the other if needed.

Follow Nicola on Twitter: @Nicmillerstale
Winner of the Guild of Food Writers Online Food Writer Award 2020
Fortnum & Mason Cookery Writer of the Year 2022