How to make: Crab Bisque

Okay, today I'm going to cook something I've been cooking for at least 20 years. This is a lovely crab bisque. A bit like a lobster bisque but I had these lovely crab shells left over and I thought I'd make you a fantastic soup with them today. Right, in this pan is going to go this rather lovely big heavy pan. It's going to go a generous amount of olive oil. So in they go. What we're not looking to do, so what we're not looking to do is a really big heavy roast. We're not looking for colour here. We're looking to sweat all these shells off and let them just kind of toast a tiny bit. If you toast this too much, as we do the reduction, you're going to end up with a really dark brown rich deep roasted flavour crab soup and I just don't think this is nice. We need to keep that sweetness because this is how we do that. Just toast them off in the olive oil. A nice big pan that can cope with it. Let that happen for a minute and let the smells judge that. You can't tell this obviously but I'm smelling this and I'm smelling sweetness and crab and beautiful. As soon as that transfers over to roasted flavour, I'm out of the game. I want vegetables in there so remember that. So first of all, on with my mirepoix. So we're going to cook this for about 30 minutes. So remember I'm sort of thinking about the mirepoix for a 30 minute cook. So I don't want, if I cut these pieces of celery in half like that, that's too, that's too big. If I cut them like this, they're going to be terrible within, they're going to be mush within five minutes so we don't want that. So just think about the way we cut this mirepoix for a 30 minute cook. I think that's really important so do do that. Need a little bit of carrot. Don't go mad with the carrot because it's very sweet. It adds a lovely flavour to it, the carrot, but it is very sweet, especially if you're going to reduce like we are. But keep focused on this, so keep it moving. We should do the Singapore chilli crab, one of my favourite things ever. When I went to, I went on holiday to Lombok a couple years ago and I stopped off in Singapore specifically so that I could go and have Singapore chilli crab. I love that, I love that dish. So we should do that, we should do that here. I watched Rick Stein do it on the telly the other day. Genius. This reminds me of that, but we're making a stock. Focus Mr Byer, focus. So a little bit of chilli in there, we don't want too much heat. I'm probably just going to split that down the middle, leave it whole but it's kind of open so it can permeate through. Bit of garlic, someone's already cut the top off that for me. Thyme is good, thyme is good in there. Let's take some of that fennel but not too much. Right, that's a nice amount of vegetables. So these vegetables are really about giving layering and depth and detail to the dish to give us another element. I want it all linear, it's all crab and we want to get that paste up a little bit and we want to make sure that it's got another, another selection of sweet flavours in there. So they are toasting now, don't go further than that, that is plenty. Butter adds. Right in there goes my lovely vegetables, look at that, beautiful. This is a quick thing to cook, only takes about 30-40 minutes to cook through once you've got the liquids in there. In there like that. I'm going to add now another butter because I want to keep that going keep that richness in there, give that a good mix through and I reckon this pan can, yeah look, lovely pan look. This is a new pan from my friends at Hestan, I like it. I didn't quite know what I was going to use it for but biscuit is, yeah. Biscuit? No, bisque. Right, keep that heat up, temperature's really good, toasting's happening, veggies are now sweating down. What I'm going to do now and most people wouldn't do this, I'm going to season this. So a little bit of salt, now I have to be careful because the crab was cooked in salted water so there is a permeation of salt already in those shells and the bits of meat so be careful but if I season it now it means that my sauce is going to be really nicely seasoned at the end, cooked from the beginning, really important. Keep that going, don't let that start to boil, you see it's starting to slow down now, that's because I added the salt, added the vegetables, they're bleeding out, they're slowing it down so temperature goes up to compensate. There we go, this is fast today, you have to be with me, you have to stay with me on this one. Yeah I've got that, I've got fastness today. Right, now we need some tomatoes. So what's the tomato bring in? Yes, that's right, they're bringing acidity, I heard you, they're bringing acidity, nice bit of acidity and it brings depth and richness. The tomatoes are really important, they're the next thing to go in once our vegetables are sweated a little bit. Once we get back to that roasting thing again, we know that the vegetables have bled out, we know the seasoning's happened and we know that that crab is ready for the next stage and that's going to be fresh tomatoes. Once we've got that back to that roasting thing, we know that the veggies are done, we know that the crab is toasting again and then it's the moment for the tomatoes. Still very, it's still very slow, even though the temperature's back up again, wait till you hear it frying again, let's bang in for the tomatoes. Right, at this stage while we're toasting, we're going to go in with our spices, adds the star anise missing here man, killing me. Saverio, can I have a star anise my darling? Thank you. So peppercorn, fennel seed, coriander, in every fish soup, shellfish stock, I always add this same trinity of spices and the star anise. I always do the same, I don't know why, I just love it and it's very important but star anise is lovely in there. You could, if you were feeling very generous, thank you, a couple of nice star anise in there. If you're feeling very generous, you can put saffron in here now. I think saffron is a very nice thing to put into a crab bisque but it's quite elaborate, it's not going to give you as much flavour as you think because there's so much other flavours going on, it's a nice thing to have in there. I'm excited by this Sam, this is going to be delicious. Look at that, can you hear that frying now? Look, come here, listen to that. You hear the popping and bubbling, that's the thyme frying in the oil, so that means the vegetables and salt have done its job. I don't want to roast it any further than that, I'm not looking for colour. In goes the tomatoes. The other thing is, really importantly, what you'll never see me use, ever, ever, is tomato puree. Wouldn't touch it, don't like it, too rich, too heavy, it's just too industrial, too processed, it brings a flavour profile that I absolutely hate so I don't go nowhere near it, don't like tomato puree. I would rather make my own tomato compote or tomato fondue and then use that if I wanted to, that kind of richness, and if we make veal stocks, that's what we do, we make a tomato fondue and use that, but I just will not have tomato puree. It's my thing, but ultimately it's my restaurant, my thing, my gig, my channel. There we go, right, I'm really happy where that is. So now it's time for the alcohol. Now we've got two alcohols here, we've got white wine and brandy. As always, the harshest alcohol goes first, right, so in goes the brandy, plenty of it as well. Doesn't have to be 50 year old XO, but it does need to have a bit of depth and a bit of sweetness to it. The brandy goes in and that gets full reduction, the white wine goes in and it gets half reduction. You with me? Okay. Now we're going with liquids, a little bit controversial, chicken stock. I really like to make crab beats with chicken stock and a lot of people won't like that. Make sure that all those, all those bones are sticking out like that, so we don't want to completely submerge them. A little bit more actually, a little bit more. That's plenty, right, so just sticking out a little bit. I'm going to let that all happen. Now into that is going to go normally double cream. I like to use creme fraiche because I think it actually gives a more acidic flavour with a really rich crab. So in with a little bit of creme fraiche, stir that in, chicken stock, a little bit of water, creme fraiche. Recipe is in the link below. Give it a go. If you get yourself a big giant cocked crab, don't use hen crabs because they've often got eggs or they're breeding, so just always try and use cocked crabs if you can, the male crabs. Right, looks pretty sort of lucid now. Give me half an hour, come back, tell me what you think. In fact don't, I'm okay. Okay, so now this has had, if you come over, have a quick look at this Sam, this has had about 35 minutes to cook away and that is absolutely delicious now. It needs a bit more intensity but I'll show you how to get that, but ultimately the crab flavour's there, all the vegetable flavour's cooked, it's crab dominant, so the crab is the first flavour I get and that's when I want to stop. Then pass it away, get rid of all those nasties. I'm going to use a muslin cloth like this, put a colander into a bowl and just pop it over like that. It's the easiest way to do it really. In goes all that stuff like that. Beautiful, you can stop beeping for a start. There, and then all we need to do is lift that up and get rid of that. Nice and simple right. We'll just hang that like that for a second, get that through. Then what we're going to do is put all that liquid back into the pan and reduce it down by half and that's ultimately going to be our crab bisque but I'll show you how to finish it. You want to get all that out, make sure you get all that liquid out, really important. You see how that creme fraiche has almost disappeared into it now, you can't see any dairy in there. I'm going to add a bit more at the end but yeah, that's a nice bowl of crab bisque. We don't want all those little bits, very important. Right, now we've got no bits in there we can whack up the heat now. We can put our crab, we need a bigger bowl than that, that's not a big enough bowl. In goes the crab bisque and we're just going to reduce that down by half, get massive flavour. That's enough for me now, that's just a really delicious, nice brightly coloured, hasn't got that horrible tomato puree thing going on. Then we can take a nice bowl out, this goes straight into a bowl with my non-drip pan. I'm going to add, I always think crab bisque needs a little bit of dairy, I'm just going to add a little bit of creme fraiche in there. I'm going to add a touch of olive oil just to finish off. You're always going to get that slightly dirty colour of crab bisque because that's just the way it is. A little black pepper. One cute little bottle of this. That is crab bisque.