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Fresh crab salad

Kylie Kwong from Kylie Kwong Heart and Soul
Seafood lovers will adore Kylie Kwong's hand-picked crabmeat salad, deliciously combined with pickled bamboo shoots and fresh coriander

Fresh crab salad

Method

1. Place the crab in the freezer for 1 hour, where it will 'go to sleep'.

2. Bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil, lower the crab into the water and cook for 5 minutes.

3. Using tongs, carefully remove the crab from the pot, drain and allow to cool at room temperature.

4. Twist the claws and legs from crab and pull off the top shell.

5. Crack the large claws with the back of a heavy knife or cleaver and extract the meat.

6. Cut along the small legs with scissors, then break them in half and extract the meat.

7. Discard the bony section at the head, rinse body cavity and under the shell where the legs were attached. Cut body of crab into quarters. Using a skewer, extract ('pick') meat from each piece of body, removing any cartilage.

8. When all the meat has been picked, discard all shell and any stray fragments of cartilage. You should have about 200g cooked, picked crabmeat.

9. Place the crabmeat in a bowl and gently combine with the ginger, shallot, spring onion, coriander, black cloud ear fungus, pickled bamboo, red wine vinegar and sea salt.

10. Serve the crab salad in 4 bowls, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with white pepper.

Cooks Notes:
"This is a light, summery dish that's refreshing to eat on a hot day," says Kylie. "I just love the sweet, delicate flavour of fresh crabmeat. The addition of pickled bamboo gives the salad depth of flavour, the vinegar balances out the sweetness of the bamboo and the coriander gives a lovely freshness to the salad. If you don't want the hassle of buying a live crab, cooking it and picking out the meat, then by all means buy ready-picked crabmeat - it's more expensive, but it'll save you a lot of preparation time."

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Serves: 2-4 as a starter

Prep: 30 min, plus 1 hr freezing plus cooling
Cook: 5 min

Ingredients
1 live crab, around 750g
2 tsp fresh ginger root, finely diced
50g Shallots, finely sliced
50g Spring onions, green part only, finely sliced
8 tsp coriander leaves, roughly chopped
8 tsp fresh black cloud ear fungus, finely sliced
45g Pickled Bamboo, cut into short, fine strips
1/2 tsp red wine vinegar
1/4 tsp sea salt
4 tsp extra virgin olive oil
pinch of cracked white pepper