Summer Food: Krab Tomatoes

Again here staying in the same tunes as the last entry we will be dealing both with tomatoes and with summer food. Fresh tomatoes and summer food are made to go together. This recipe brings the element of the seafood, something that we have not dealt that much in this blog. Well there is not much more to say about the tomato itself since all is reported on the previous post. However it is worth taking sometime to talk about the king of misunderstood food the krab meat.

Krab meat, imitation crab or surimi, on the contrary to the popular believe is not a bad food. It is perfectly decent and nutrition food. It is heavily processed but if you just look at it without expecting to get the flavor of crab or lobster, it is a perfect food to use in the summer. Surimi is a Japanese loan word referring to a food product intended to mimic lobster, crab, and other shellfish meat. It is typically made from white-fleshed fish, (such as pollock or hake), that has been pulverized to a paste and attains a rubbery texture when cooked. The term is also commonly applied to food products made from lean meat in a similar process. Surimi is a much-enjoyed food product in many Asian cultures and is available in many shapes, forms, and textures. The most common surimi product in the Western market is imitation or artificial crab legs. Such a product is often sold as sea legs and krab in America, or seafood sticks, crab sticks and fish sticks in the UK, or seafood extender in Australia.

And now the recipe. Well I will start something that it was an idea I got from the pioneer woman, a great, great food blogger. She puts a picture of all the products she is using and I loved that idea. A problem is that I rarely measure and never have a fixed of ingredients, I just make it as I go, and I strongly encourage you to do so as well. But for this particular recipe I could do it.

So we will need:

• 1 challot
• 1 tbsp minced dill
• 2 1/2 cups of crab surimi (or lobster, not much different)
• 1 tbsp cappers
• 1 tbsp pickled ginger
• 1 tbsp of wasabi flavored mustard (or Dijon mustard and a notch of wasabi)
• 1 tsp of picked green pepper corns
• 1 tsp old bay original seasoning
• tbsp mayonnaise (homemade better, store bought ok)
• 3 tbsp fat-free greek drained yogurt
• Rice sushi vinegar
• A few dashes of tabasco

Start by mincing finely the dill.

Next step is to mince the shallot again, very, very fine. Start be removing the top and root part.

Carefully make horizontal cuts almost until the end where the root was.

Follow with vertical cuts…

And mince it by cutting perpendicular to the cut you just did. This is different technique than the one we used before, but it is resulting to a finer minced onion.

Follow by mincing the picked ginger by rocking motion back and forth… Show no mercy.

In a bowl add the wasabi mustard and follow with a couple of tbsp of the pickled ginger brine and add the chopped ingredients.

Add the cappers.

Take a tsp of the pickled peppercorns and roughly chop them on the board. This is not absolute addition, but it give a nice peppery flavor. You can skip them if you don ‘t have them, but when you use it you have to chop them to release of the flavor.

Add the mayonnaise and…

Mix with a whisk.

Time for the greek yogurt. The greek yogurt is readily available in all the big mega marts and it is superior to any other yogurt you come across. The secret is the draining process that removes most of the water, leaving behind a firm rich texture.

To protect the yogurt there is a paper right on the top. That is a sign of a good greek yogurt. Remove it.

Add three tbsp of the yogurt in the mix and with the whisk stir it in.

Season with the seasoned rice vinegar.

Add 1 tsp Old Bay seasoning. A word on that… It is a simple spice mix with all you can find in a grocery store. However, no matter how much I tried I could never replicate the taste of it. And I don ‘t care… Thinks like that worth to be around. I love buying Old Bay seasoning, it is like a can of the america South. Yeah I had a pinch of live oil there… It is not required though…

A few dashes of tabasco. I like the habanero version for this one, since it is a a little more fruity.

Take the krab meat and chop it roughly and add it in the mix… and mix.

We kinda covered the procedure for hollowing the tomatoes, but, in this case since we are not cooking the tomatoes we have to peal them prior to the stuffing. For that we need to blanch the tomatoes. That will loosen the pectin (yes the substance that gives the jam the firm texture) and release the  skin. To do that you add the tomatoes in boiling water for 30 seconds and to halt the cooking you put them in an ice bath.

Cut a shallow cross at the bottom…

Boil them…

Chill them…

Peal them…

Hollow them… Instead of a spoon, use a knife to separate the walls, and your finger to remove the seeds. They are much more delicate than before, and therefore they can fall apart easy.

 Delicate as… a pealed tomato…

Stuff them… with the mixture, and arrange them on a plate. No cooking required. I am using a napkin to handle them so they don’t slip around, and sucks some of the moisture out, to make a little firmer texture..

This recipe yield 8-10 tomatoes or 5 and materials for a great sandwich. That is actually very true. The filling can go on bread in between bread, on pita bread, in pita bread and everywhere you can imagine… mmm no… not on pancakes…

It is a great recipe, my own invention, and I summon it to you. Please enjoy and feel free to modify it according to your taste.

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