#24 [Casquinha de Siri]

As promised yesterday, I am posting the "Casquinha de Siri" (Crab in a shell/ Crab in een Kortsje) recipe but no half-naked Mr. M. No... that one was just a marketing disguise to grab your attention.

Back to the dish, this is a traditional Carioca (or Brazilian?) way of preparing crab meet. Of course, this is the European version. The only real Brazilian ingredient is the palm oil. We also served it on a big bowl because it was supposed to feed 15 hungry people but of course, you can half the recipe and serve it into charming empty shells as an appetizer.

It is very tasty, although not really 100% the same taste as the Brazilian version, which of course, is much better, specially when you add a very cold beer and a very hot city. The complete ingredient list is at the end of this post but please, if you go to Rio get informed where the best place to eat this dish is. When I used to live there, I went to the "Restaurante Siri" in the Vila Isabel neighborhood. An experience to never forget.

Stop talking and show how to do it!

1. Warm up the oven

2. Shred the crab meat in a big bowl. I was too late when I came to the kitchen so, no pictures of this step!

3. Add the juice of one lemon, and season with salt and pepper. Mix well, proof and set it apart.

4. In the meantime soak the bread into a bowl with the milk and set it apart

5. Sink the tomatoes for a while on boiling water until they start to peel off. Remove them from the water and peel them. Slice them and set apart.

6. Peel and slice the garlic very thin

7. On the kitchen machine, grate the cheese

8. Peel the onions and grate them also in the kitchen machine, but using a bigger shredder! You don't want onion pure!

9. Heat olive oil into a big pan. Add the secret ingredient: the Palm Oil and let it smelt. The oil will get a wonderful orange color and it smells like.. hummm... Brazil?

11. Fry the onions and after 5 minutes add the garlic and the tomatoes. Leave it frying for a while, or until the onions get a bit transparent. No brown onions!

12. Add the crab meat and season with Tabasco and nutmeg

13. Add the coriander and the beaten eggs

14. Squeeze the slices of bread to remove the excess of milk and toss it in pieces into the pan

14. Keep steering and mixing vigorously until it gets an homogenous consistency. But don't do so vigorously like Mr. M. does because the entire kitchen gets under....

15. Put the mix on a big oven plate

16. Pour some fine bread-crumbs

17. Spread the cheese

18. Put in the oven until it is golden! Lekkkkkkkkkeeeeer! Delicious!

TIP: Don't serve it super-hot. Let it cool down a bit, but also don't serve it cold :)

About the pictures: I am training to photograph Tante Sherry's book :) I hope she likes it! It took me a while to find a good position in the kitchen and because I did not use flash I was holding a lens of 2 kg (a canon IS) up on a high chair. Mr. M. is very quick and moves profusely. My apologies for the unsharp pictures: it is much more difficult photographing Mr. M. running around in the kitchen than a bride running to marry...


Ingredients

1/2kg crab meet (can be the processed crab. Here we never find the real thing, only the king crabs)
Sout
Pepper
1 limon
2 big onions
3 garlic
3 tomatoes
2 tbs olive oil
1 tbs palm oil
1 grove coriander
tabasco
nutmeg
2 eggs
6 slices white bread
1/2 liter milk
bradcrumbs
2 tbs Parmesan cheese

Note: the recipe is shown as we do it, with our own variations and there is no guarantee that yours will be exactly like ours. Try it on your own ;)