a healthy, tasty alternative to a cream based soup, aka roasted cauliflower soup, kombu, silken tofu edition.

so i used to watch my mom make all sorts of tasty things in her vitamix. shes had one since i was back in the college years and (unfortunately for me) that was a long time ago.

kong bee ji (stewed pork ribs in ground soy beans with kimchee) is one of my favorite dishes. i can only imagine the difference my mother has seen in prepping this dish. its a pretty intensive dish to make right now with her vitamix, but i can only imagine what its like to make this with a stone grinder, manually spinning and grinding the soy beans into a nice puree.

growing up see this, it was only natural for me to evolve and intertwine what ive seen with flavors and techniques i learned along the way.

lets cook....

you know when you cook instant ramen, you boil water.

why use water?

because the instructions said to?

ive always had a problem with people telling me what to do. i will teach you to be as rebellious and anti establishment as i am. i fight the power by not listening to instructions on instant ramen packaging.

kombu broth

buy some dried kombu. rinse off a big chunk. simmer it in a pot of water with some onions, garlic and you have a low calorie flavor booster that will transform simple instant ramen into something thats actually presentable to beyond your 5 year old nephews palate.

for the most part, if water is going into a dish, a broth will make it better.

now that we have that down.... i have been experimenting with things and i came up with this recipe.

low calorie, flavor boosted roasted cauliflower soup.

i rinse off a large piece of kombu. i rinse it off to get the impurities off, the excess salt included. add a quarter of a chopped onion, a couple cloves of garlic and a few dried shiitakes mushrooms. add a couple pinches of salt just to get the flavors blending. i have no idea if this is true or not, but i like to salt throughout the cooking process because i believe it brings out the flavors of each individual ingredient, it highlights each step of the cooking process and you end up with a more balanced flavorful product.

simmer for 10-15 minutes.

take the broth off heat.

caulifower is awesome. i dont know why such amazing vegetables like cauliflower, brocilli and brussel sprouts have such a bad name. i remember growing up and being scared to try these because tv shows i used to watch then, made them out to be such terrible things.... theyre delicious!

i rinse and break up the cauliflower, small inch sized pieces will do. you want to break it up enough to get a nice char on a good portion of the surface area, but you dont want a crumbly burnt mess either. rough chop up some onions, add some peeled garlic cloves (please chop off the little stem area). remember, you want all the items to roast up consistently, so try to make everything about the same size. add all these in a large bowl. add some good olive oil, salt and pepper and coat things evenly.

(note, this time, i added in some leeks, more on this later)

place this all on a flat oven safe surface and roast up these bad boys in a preheated, 400 degree oven. keep an eye on these things. it should take about 8-10 minutes to get a good roast going, but be careful because it can go from a flavoring enhancing technique to an ashy mess real fast! i check once during this time and i move things around, flip over the larger pieces.

while you have the veggies roasting, you cant start to prep the next phase of the process. the kombu broth should have cooled down a bit by now. why is this important? well, depending on what kind of blender you have, adding very hot liquids might not be the best technique.

im using a vitamix, but i have done this with a normal counter top blender as well, and while it will require a bit more work with a regular blender, its nothing too difficult. with a regular blender you will have to stop the blender, mix things around, maybe add more liquid but you will get the idea when you give it a shot yourself.

besides the kombu broth the other secret to this low calorie, low fat, super flavorful recipe... silken tofu. yup. high in protien. low in fat and calories.... this adds a great texture to the party and you wont miss your heavy cream at all. no seriously. this isnt a "diet" recipe that tastes like a half assed crappy version of the original. this is a different technique/recipe for a dish that looks and tastes just as good if not better than its fatty counterpart.

this is half the normal container of silken tofu, about a cup or so. now you can play around with the ratios to your liking.

to give you an idea of how much you can adjust, after this attempt, i realized i didnt like those leeks in this recipe because they burned too fast when roasting and the end product had too much of a leek flavor to it. next time, no leeks.

take a look at the ratios.

its about 1/3 silken tofu to 2/3 roasted cauliflower. i think it should be more like 1/4 silken tofu to 3/4 roasted cauliflower, but whatever. it still ended up good, and playing around with these things is half the fun. besides, you usually learn the most this way.

add in the broth. i added a small amount of the simmered solids from the broth as well... why not!

now i like to add in only a little of the broth at a time.

my finger is at the broth level.

i do this for two reasons, one, i think its easier to blend and its cleaner with less liquid. more importantly, two, as long as it blends, you can always add more broth. i ended up with a way too "watered" down soup my first attempt. you can always add broth, you shouldnt try to take it out by overcooking something.

season with a couple heaping pinches of salt and pepper.

now just blend.

to this i add more broth until i get the consistency i want.

i basically ended up doubling the amount of liquid in the blender.

i poured this out into a pot

the soup has a nice consistency and ive seasoned it enough, but its still not quite there. its was a bit frothy from all the blending so i just grabbed the pot by the handles and shook it around. most of the foam will settle in the middle and you can scoop it right out.

warm/simmer for a tad bit and its done.

i purposely left out ANY kind of measurements in this post because i want you to figure things out on your own. you will see when you need more kombu broth..... take a spoonful and taste to see if you need more salt and pepper.

i dont really want to tell you to do something the exact same way i do it... learn this technique, figure out what you like and adjust it.

you can add a few drop of some good olive oil, some chives..... tada.

pic courtesy of s+s gastro pub

today, we added a small spoonful of truffle caviar.

a low calorie, low fat , highly nutrious soup that EVERYONE will love.

thank me later. buy me a beer.

GARLIC ROASTED CRAB (confit/butter poached method)..... and crab butter

hi guys. here it is....garlic roasted crab

after ten years or so of tinkering around with this dish, here is what i consider to be my best method of making "garlic roasted crab".

first, let me say something very important.

you get what you put into it.

i know not everyone has the means to get dungeness crab right from the water and i know not everyone has an awesome seafood wholesaler near by.... but do whatever you can to get the best ingredients, especially with seafood.

that being said, i live in san francisco. some of my buddies actually walk into the surf during dungeness season and pull them right out of the water. no bullshit.

we are extremely lucky to live in the bay area because among other things, we have amazing access to great ingredients. personally, i like to get all my dungeness crab from New England Lobster (NEL) in South San Francisco. a friend turned me onto this place and ive been a huge fan since. they are a wholesaler that sells to the public. when you see top restaurants on their client list, you know its got to be good. turnover is key to freshness. thats one reason why i prefer NEL. not saying our other reasources are bad... like Seafood Center on clement, Sun Fat on mission,  or the ubiquitous 99 ranch.... they all come to mind when i think fresh live crab, but i personally think NEL has them all beat because of turnover.... (note, NEL usually closes around 2pm, as i said, they are a wholesaler and they have wholesale hours UPDATED NOTE. NEL IS NO LONGER JUST A WHOLESALER, BUT NO A MARKET AND RESTAURANT IN A NEW MUCH LARGER LOCATION)

long winded way of saying get the freshest crab you can.

right to it, this isn't a recipe, this is more a post about a technique. i think anyone can follow a recipe and reproduce something and thats how most of us start out in the kitchen, but i think that learning a technique is just as if not more important. you can apply techniques youve learned to current recipes to exponentially expand your cooking repertoire. so i wont list exact amounts, temperatures or anything like that, you can figure out for yourself or adjust things to your liking.... for example, if you don't want to use the crazy shit ton amount of butter i use, you can use olive oil. if youre cooking more crab, you can leave the crab submerged in your garlic bath at a lower temperature for a longer time...

that being said, here's some stuff you will need.

butter, LOTS AND LOTS OF BUTTER. the reason why i call this the confit method is that you will submerge all the crab parts into a bath of garlic, seasoning and butter. (yeah its more of poaching method, but saying confit makes me sound all smarted)

garlic

salt and pepper

olive oil

as far as cookware, you will need a pot large enough to steam your crab flat, head down. you dont want to boil the crabs so a veggie steamer helps. heres what im using today.

its simply a large pot with a veggie steamer. (make sure your steamer stands are down so its above the water level. add enough water to steam for at least 15 mins. theres about an inch and a half of water under this steamer.

add salt.

i actually have an aluminum 20 quart tamale steamer i use to steam up to 7 crabs. i also have various size stock pots for lesser quantities. its important to use the right size cookware. confucius says, you don't use a hatchet to kill a fly on a friends face.

steaming flat is VERY IMPORTANT. why? one of the ingredients will be "made" during this steaming process. you will see what im talking about in a bit.

a small food processor will be handy to puree the garlic, but if you don't have one, just mince up (mash up) your garlic by hand. honestly though, a food processor is kinda key for this cooking method. its really hard to mince up this crazy amount of garlic you will need. i take a handful of garlic (peeled, stem section trimmed) at a time and add some salt and pepper, some olive oil to lubricate, and puree the hell out of this. basically a salty garlic paste.

i add this to whatever pan im using that day. i used to use a small casserole dish to cook this dish. its enough to make one crab or so which was plenty for myself. i really didnt cook for guests back then, just for myself.

these days, im using a half or full hotel pan, the later being large enough to cook 10 crab! the vessel you want to use must be at least about an inch higher than the height of the crabs laid out flat in the butter bath. if it was me, i would use a pan deep and big enough so that the the crabs in the bath only take up half the space. when you move this pan around in the cooking process, the last thing you need is hot butter all over you.

heres where you should adjust things. last time i made a big batch of garlic roasted crab, i melted about 4 lbs of butter.... SCARY, I KNOW..... if you want to use more olive oil, no biggie...... but remember, all this butter ISNT going directly into your hearts, you are using this bath to cook, not to eat.

(NOTE, THE LEFTOVER CRAB BUTTER GARLIC BATH IS HELLLLLLA GOOD TO USE AS AN INGREDIENT IN OTHER DISHES. IT IS A STAPLE I ALWAYS HAVE IN MY FRIG... MORE ON THIS LATER)

back on track. melt enough butter to cover all the crab parts. this will all depend on the size of your crab, how many crab and the vessel size. tinker around. its half the fun.

add in the garlic paste. how much? well i tend to go with something like 1/4 to 3/4 paste to butter volume wise. dont worry too much about this. you will see as you "recycle and reuse" this bath gets more potent and the volumes and ratios really dont mean much.


heat this in mixture in an 350 oven.

meanwhile, the crab itself....

when your crab is fresh, its kicking, it will pinch you. you will get hurt. you will quickly realize that crab should be handled a very specific way. try to handle it from the back of it because they will have a hard time reaching you. put the crab in the freezer for about five minutes because this will put it to "sleep". you are going to want to rinse and scrub this badboy a bit so a sleeping crab is helpful. under running water, scrub scrub scrub, pay attention to the under carriage and the feathery part on either side of the underside of the head.

your sleeping beauty will quickly come back to life. HURRY. toss in this badboy head down flat in your piping hot steamer. steam for ten minutes. (adjust for number of crabs of course) you DONT want to cook it, just parsteam it. enough to kill the crab and start the cooking process. 

during this time, check up on your garlic butter bath. it should have melted and warmed up a bit. season a bit. i like to taste this... yes, i just said i taste melted butter with garlic.... im gross i know. it should look something like this.

and a spoonful of the garlic on the bottom

(NOTE... this is ALOT of this garlic butter bath. im using an old batch of leftover garlic butter bath i had stored in a glass tupperware container. this is enough to make about 3-4 crabs in. )

leave oven at 350

about this time, your crab should be done steaming. pull it out carefully, and place HEAD DOWN somewhere you can work with it. id wait a minute to two so it cools a bit, but remember, it will still be burning hot. if some legs fell off, dont worry, just toss them into the bath. remove the flap on the underbelly.

you are now going to try to separate the head shell and the body and legs without spilling the contents of the shell. a bit tricky, but nothing too hard.

i use a pair of heat proof gloves to manhandle the crab at this point as its going to be BURNING!!!

i just put a bit of pressure on the head shell and with the other hand, a bit of pressure on the back of the crab.  DONT SPILL!!!!  

taste the brownish, yellowish liquid.... (if its blackish, its probably not good. you probably got an old crab.)

this is what people call crab butter. it should have a nice briny, slightly salty taste to it. this is one of the main reasons why you need fresh crabs. them guts and and brains and organs go bad hella quick. if the crab is not fresh, this crab butter will be disgusting. if its fresh, this will be liquid gold. 

this is gold. i just pour this liquid right into the bath through a strainer

now theres more of this gold but its going to get a bit squishy now. there should be some guts and fats stuck to the shell. put that in a strainer. the body of the crab (its actually called the knuckle and legs and claws) will be "sealed" in with a membrane in the center part of the knuckle. break through this meaty membrane and scoop out the crab butter into the same strainer.

get it all!! this is the magical crab butter that makes everything damn good. 

now a side note. if you feel all grossed out because its guts and stuff, please grow up. this is really the magical stuff. innards of all sorts of creatures make the damn best sauces. its not gross. its what makes dishes shine.

strain the crab butter through your strainer as best as possible. i like to take a spoon and scrape and push it through. you will only be left with a fraction of what you started with. most of the volume of the crab butter is liquid and as such you want to get as much as possible through. 

back to prepping the crab. remove the lungs on the side of the knuckles and other bits that don't look like it belongs on a finished product. some more membranes, loose pieces that make up its antennas and mouth...

break the crab in half, its easy (or chop it). then chop in half again.

now take these quarters and put them into the garlic paste, melted butter, crab butter mixture. try to cover all the pieces but if you cant and some of the crab parts are sticking out, well adjust.... baste it, rotate the pieces, whatever.

put the whole shebang into the 350 oven. loosely cover with some foil. i usually do about 20 minute or so, adjusting for size and number of crabs of course. 

for this one crab in a half hotel pan, it was in a 350 oven for 15 minutes

take the pieces out and place them on an oven safe pan. 

now the leftover bath... let this cool somewhat and we will get back to this later.

this is basically done... but why not blast these tasty morsels under a broiler to caramelize some of the garlic and thicken the bath water on the crab adding another layer of flavor.

a quick a minute under the broiler is perfect... then TADA

garlic roasted crab, confit method a la euge. of course i would usually add at least some chopped chives/ green onions..... but yes. dig in. scoop out some of the bath solution for dipping if you like.... some lemons... beers..... chard...... grey goose chilled?

*note im going to start adding some pictures of garlic crab dinners with friends, because, good food should always be shared with good people... and my pictures usually suck*

picture courtesy of tiffany m.t.

......

now the left over bath..... this is awesome. of course you could just get rid of this, but youd be a fool!!!! these days, it seems i make this dish to have this byproduct more than the dish itself!!!

i put the cooled bath solution into a glass tupperware and leave it in the frig. its good for a few months at least.

when i want to make the BEST garlic noodle (yes i said best.... i HATE to use the word best when talking about food because its so subjective but after serving my garlic noodles to a good number of people and them saying its freaking god damn off the hinges, i am starting to believe the garlic noodles arent too shabby), some fried rice, awesome sauteed chinese veggies..... i scoop out a spoonful and TADA!!! more on this next time when ill make a couple of these.

you also probably want to save this butter bath for the next time you make these garlic crab. i usually have one batch i keep for the entire local dungeness crab season, constantly cooking the crab in the bath adding more and more flavor.... im getting hungry now.