April 18, 2021 brunch - crab salad. Dinner at Susan and Charlie’s

April 18, 2021 brunch - crab salad. Dinner at Susan and Charlie’s 

I awakened at 7:30. Suzette was already working in the garden.

I watched the news programs and Man U beat Fulham 3 to 1 to retain its 2nd place position in the PL.

We had bought a new produce at Costco yesterday, bag with three Dungeness crabs claws and internal meat sections in six pieces.  In other words Costco has stopped selling whole frozen crabs and started removing the outer shell and now is cleaning the crab by removing all the gills and bad parts and reducing the sellable crab to its lump meat and claws.  It charges more per lb. but you get more useable meat than the old method of buying a whole frozen crab for the same or lower total cost.

We also bought a bottle of Gruet Brut champagne at Costco yesterday, so we had almost everything we needed for our favorite Sunday brunch.

At 10:00 we started cooking.  

Bob’s crab sauce - 

I first made my favorite crab sauce which is a combination of a cocktail sauce, a mignonette sauce, and a crab Louis sauce.  I fetched the small container of PPI cocktail sauce. Then I minced 1/2 shallot and put it into a bowl and squeezed juice of 1/2 lemon on it until the shallot pieces were mostly submerged in the lemon juice.  I let that sit for about twenty minutes.  I then stirred about 2/3 cup of mayonnaise into the cocktail sauce.  After twenty minutes I stirred the shallot and lemon juice into the Louis sauce.

Suzette suggested we make a salad with all the wonderful delicate lettuce from our garden.

She spun and filled pasta bowls with lettuce and boiled seven eggs and after the eggs cooled shelled two eggs and sliced them and placed 1 on each salad.

While she was doing that, I made the sauce and sliced and diced a Roma tomato, 1/3 of a cucumber and a large avocado and put 1/2 on each salad, so the salad was composed in four sections with a different ingredient covering lettuce in each section.

Suzette lay the six crab sections on a tray and fetched champagne glasses and big and small forks and a shell cracker and I opened the champagne and filled our glasses and we were ready for brunch.

Brunch actually was a lengthy crab picking experience.  In the end we ate 1/2 of the crab and filled a container with the other half that we will use to make crab cakes this week.

The crab meat was tender and sweet, just like you would expect from a freshly cooked crab. It seemed to me that the crab had never been frozen, which makes it a much superior product to the former frozen crabs.

We dressed the salad with the crab sauce and ate it after we covered the surface with freshly picked crab meat, although we often dipped the long claw sections into the sauce and ate them as we picked and sipped champagne, so it was a labor of love for crab and champagne.

We ate our salads after we had picked 1/2 of the claws and the finished picking the rest.

After we finished brunch, Suzette shelled the remaining five eggs and put them in a bowl.  I then went to the garden and picked a handful of chives and sliced them thinly and added them to the eggs.  Then I sliced three 1/8 inch thick slices of red onion and minced them and added them. I then peeled the remaining 1/3 cucumber and seeded and diced it and added it.  Finally Suzette fetched the remaining fresh dill that had gone limp and I removed the stalks and chopped the leaves and added the minced dill.

Suzette covered the salad and put it in the fridge.  She will finish the egg salad tomorrow by adding mayonnaise.

At 2:00 we made a cup of tea and peanut butter and honey sandwiches and zoomed with Luke and Elaine until 3:00. It was very pleasant to see them and we all agreed we looked forward to seeing them in the near future.

Later I went to fill the propane tank at u-haul but the computer was down, so they could not print the order and told me they would call when up and running.

I went home and started preparing the Yukon gold potatoes for roasting for dinner.  I pre-heated the oven to 375 degrees and cut three or four potatoes into bite sized sections and added about ten or twelve cloves of garlic until the pieces filled a 10 by 15 inch Pyrex baking dish. Then Suzette tossed the potatoes with salt and olive oil and covered it with aluminum foil and placed the dish in the oven and baked it for an hour.

While the potatoes were roasting I went to the garden again, but this time I  picked a handful of mint and chopped it finely and put it into a pint container.  

At 6:30 Suzette put the Pyrex baking dish in a strawberry flat cardboard box and we walked over to the Palmer’s. 

They had prepared a lovely dinner, roasted chicken from Costco, steamed asparagus, and fresh apple pie plus our roasted potatoes. We started sitting at the kitchen counter where Susan had laid four cheeses and a bowl of pistachios and a bottle of South Coast New Zealand Pinot Noir. The cheeses included English Derby (dill flavored cheddar), Saint Andre, Swiss Gruyere, and an English Stilton plus rounds of French bread and crackers.

Charlie said this was their fourth meal with guests this week, so those who have been vaccinated are coming out of isolation.  We were thrilled to have dinner with them and enjoyed a lively conversation until 9:30.

I was amazed how delicious the chicken was and that it cost only $5.00.  Suzette said her restaurant is not able to compete with Costco.

Susan’s apple pie with raisins was the best part of the meal, a crisp flaky crust with succulent filling of juicy apples and raisins inside.

It was fun to be back to normal with the Palmer’s.

Bon Appetit