When I was at Pro’s Ranch Market yesterday, the young man in
the fish department served me a freshly made imitation crab and shrimp salad
made with mayonnaise, celery and onions, imitation crab and chopped
shrimp. I loved it and bought a packet
of imitation crab ($ 1.79/lb.), which was actually layers of partially red
colored fish cake.
Tonight I decided to make a cool dinner and attempt to
replicate the imitation crab salad I had tasted at Pro’s yesterday.
I started by putting
about 1 ½ cups of mayonnaise into a bowl with juice of two limes I then added
about ¼ cup of red onion and 2 stalks of celery and 2 large green onions, 1 lb. of
imitation crab meat, 10 chopped large boiled shrimp, two chopped sprigs of
parsley, about 1 Tbsp. of chopped garlic greens and a couple of dashes of salt.
Suzette thought the mixture was too vinegary and I thought the
mixture was too stiff and not very tasty, so I added one chopped vine ripe tomato,
which helped flavor and emulsify the mixture.
Suzette added the last two Tbsps. of her avocado and crema mixture and I
added about 2/3 cup more mayonnaise.
Finally I added a couple of dashes of Tabasco sauce and felt like I
could add nothing more to improve the flavor, so I put the mixture in the
fridge to meld its flavors.
Suzette said, “Are you going to serve avocado stuffed crab
salad”? And I reflexively uttered,
“Yes”. Since she was ready to go pick
greens from the garden for a crab salad, I followed her and we picked a basket
of lettuce and greens.
While Suzette cleaned and spun the lettuce, I cut two
avocados in half and stripped the skin off of them. When she handed me plates filled with a bed
of lettuce, I placed two avocado halves on each of them.
Then I asked Suzette, ”Do you want beer or wine for this
dish?” She said, “A light red
wine.” I asked, “Perhaps a dry
rosé?” She did not respond, which I
took as an affirmative response, so I went to the cellar and did not see any chilled
rosé of a red, so I picked the next best thing, a bottle of French dry rosé a
2011 La Ferme Julien. Here is an image
of the back label. Those who are Tour
de France fans will have a special appreciation for this wine, as climbing Mont
Ventoux is one of the classic elements of any year’s Tour.
I scooped three spoonsful of crab salad onto the two
avocado halves on each plate of salad to cover them and Suzette set up T.V.
tables in our bedroom so we could watch Colbert and John Stewart (our big TV is
out at the moment) and poured glasses of rosé and we were ready to eat. The fresh shrimp helped mask the fact that
the crab was really processed fish cake.
I prefer to think that it tasted great for what it was, a processed fish
cake and fresh shrimp cold salad. The clean
dry and fruity tasting rosé was perfect with the dinner and even helped balance
the fatty flavor of the avocado and mayonnaise.
Here is the salad the next morning. You can see that the salad has become
creamier, which I think is good, because it means the different elements are
mixing together.
My first memory of this type of cold shrimp salad was from
helping a group of women shell and make shrimp salad in Denmark in the summer
of 1968. We were shelling small Baltic
shrimp and it was tedious work. It seemed
to take an hour or two to fill a medium sized bowl. Then they added a light creamy mayonnaise and
we ate open face sandwiches of lovely cold shrimp salad on bread.
Baltic shrimp are typically boiled at sea
in salt water, which makes them incredibly plump and fresh and slightly salty,
which is a lot like the kind of shrimp I buy at Pro’s Ranch Market that seem to
be frozen whole and thus are infused with salt water, so the Mexican shrimp,
when boiled impart a slightly salty taste to a dish, which I love (think
“Mexican shrimp coctel”). Anyway that
salty flavor in our fish cake and shrimp salad triggered a déjà vu memory of
summer in Scandinavia for me.
Bon Appétit
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