A Simply Luxurious Crab Dip a la Marketman

It’s more about the engraved piggy board than the crab dip, really. Many, many thanks for the extremely thoughtful pasalubong that I recently received (along with La Maison chocolate bars and food books) from a generous family visiting Cebu. I immediately used the porky board to serve a non-pork dish. Inspired by the crab from Bantayan, here is an incredibly easy crab dip for you to make for your next snazzy home dinner party.

Take some cooked and shelled crab meat, add an equal weight of cream cheese and a tablespoon or two of mayonnaise, a touch of fresh lemon juice, season with old bay seasoning (if you have it) or salt, pepper and a little celery seed crushed or ground, mix in some chopped italian parsley and stick them in ramekins and place in a hot oven (or toaster oven) for say 15-20 minutes until you slightly brown the tops and the dip is heated all the way through.

Garnish with some chopped green italian parsley and serve with toasted slices of french bread. Alternatively, you can spread the dip on individual pieces of bread and toast those directly — this takes less time in the oven — and you have ready to eat portions. Either way, they turned out really nice. Redolent with crab, but rich from the cream cheese and mayonnaise. The dip looks dry in the photos (the exterior is crusted a bit) but then yields to a soft creamy spread inside. I like the version with some old bay seasoning, but feel free to experiment. A little cayenne would also be nice, and I saw another recipe with a touch of soy sauce that made a lot of sense to me. A delicious but incredibly easy starter to make if you already have peeled crab meat to start with. Otherwise, picking meat out of some steamed leftover crabs (with or without bay seasoning) will add some 20-25 minutes of preparation time.