Crab Gazpacho

I've been meaning to do this for a while but I've been too lazy/hungry to take pictures.  All the cool kids have cooking blogs now though, so here goes.


I had a pair of leftover crabs and thought this would be a neat twist on a traditional Maryland Crab soup.  I used this recipe as a guide.  Most recipes called for deseeding (or is it seeding? I can't imagine anyone would want to add seeds to a tomato, so maybe seeding gets the point across?) the tomatoes, so I did that and upped the tomatoes from 4 to 6.  I used only one large bell pepper because that's all I had.  I also added a diced jalapeno because those are good in everything (read: everything).  The recipe also called for a (de)seeded cucumber and an onion.

I used a food processor to coarsely chop all the vegetables and then stirred them around.  The jalapeno I just chopped by hand and added at the end.  {Note: at this point, if you decide gazpacho is stupid, you can abort and have a pretty decent salsa.}  I also didn't have tomato juice, so I found a hillbilly recipe for making it from tomato paste.  I reduced it a bit to one can paste and three cans water because I like thick soups.  Add the 3 cups tomato juice, ¼ cup olive oil, and ¼ cup wine vinegar, salt and pepper to taste, stir it around, and let it sit in the fridge for a bit to mix flavors and get chilled.

Secret Ingredient - The crabs, not the fruit

Next I had to extract the meat from the crabs, a primitive and barbaric practice taught to all members of the Baltimore tribe at age 3.  The great trouble I've found with using this process for cooking is that I always seem to end with less meat than I expected.  Also I'm usually not as hungry by the end.  It's a delicious mystery.  Once I had all the remaining meat in a bowl, I sprinkled some old bay on top, more or less reflexively.




I googled "crab gazpacho" and read a few entries, all of which suggested topping it with crabmeat prior to eating as opposed to mixing it in, so I did as such.  Behold.  

I should probably take pictures with a better camera than my phone, but blogger/google+ make that pretty convenient, and I don't know where my camera battery is, so that's unlikely to change.


I'm not a particular fan of tomatoes outside of Italian food, so I wasn't sure what to expect from this.  It was not bad, I think Ann liked it more than I did.  Between the tomatoes and vinegar it was fairly acidic, and the onion came through very strong as well.  The cucumber and red pepper were there mostly as a nice crunch, but the crabmeat got totally overpowered and didn't add much.  I sprinkled some sugar in the leftovers to try to mute the acidity, I'll see how that turns out.  Next time I think I'll use less onion and just serve it as a side dish with some bread.

Recipe for people who hate reading:

6 Plum (FYI, also called Roma, that was a fun five minutes in the supermarket) tomatoes, (de)seeded
1 Cucumber (de)seeded
1-2 Red bell peppers (de)seeded
1 Red onion
1 Jalapeno
3 cups tomato juice
¼ cup wine vinegar
¼ cup olive oil


Coarsely chop the vegetables and add to a large bowl.  Stir in liquid ingredients, add salt and pepper to taste, and chill in refrigerator.  I think this is one of those things that gets better as leftovers.  Top with crabmeat if you have nothing better to do with crabmeat (like eat it).

Update:

The sugar and overnight stay definitely helped. It was less acidic and more complex. I'd still call it a side dish though, and leave the crab out of it.