Recipe: Wild garlic broth with crab meat
Serves 4
200g crab meat, preferably jumbo lump
Wild garlic broth
225g wild garlic leaves
A generous handful of baby spinach
Salt
Piment d'Espelette
Garnish
2 large slices sourdough bread
21g unsalted butter
1 thyme sprig
1 garlic clove, crushed
12 Kalamata olives
1 small citron or lemon
1 spring onion
Handful of dill, chervil and tarragon
Juice of ½ lemon or to taste
Extra virgin olive oil
Fleur de sel
Remove any bits of shell or cartilage from the crab meat, taking care to leave it in large pieces. Refrigerate.
For the wild garlic broth, bring a large pot of salted water to a rapid boil. Add the wild garlic leaves, bring back to a boil, and cook for 30 seconds, then add the spinach and cook for 10 more seconds.
Drain in a strainer set over a bowl, then immediately transfer to a bowl of iced water to cool. Reserve about 500ml of the cooking liquid.
Drain the greens and squeeze the leaves to remove as the liquid. Purée in a blender, adding 1½ cups of the reserved cooking liquid, or enough to achieve a broth consistency. Season with salt and piment d'Espelette. Refrigerate.
For the garnish, dice the bread into 1cm cubes. Melt the butter in a small skillet over a medium heat. Add the thyme, garlic and bread, and sauté until the croûtons are just golden brown, about 10 minutes. Drain on a paper towel.
Halve and pit the olives. Finely dice the citron, discarding the seeds (or grate the zest of the lemon). Peel and trim the spring onion and cut it lengthwise into very thin slices.
Roughly chop the dill, chervil, and tarragon leaves. Bring the broth to a simmer in a saucepan. Toss the crab meat with the lemon juice in another small saucepan, add a drizzle of olive oil, and heat gently. Add the herbs and season to taste with fleur de sel.
Pour the broth into four bowls, add a spoonful of crab meat to each one, and garnish with the croûtons, olives, diced citron (or zest), and onion slices.
Recipe from Frenchie: New Bistro Cooking by Greg Marchand, reviewed here
Recommended wine
The recipe suggests Savoie white (Altesse); Adrien Berlioz would pair well with this dish.
