Sometimes, odds and ends just come together beautifully… This salad wasn’t planned. We had some leftover crabmeat from some steamed alimasag (cross crabs) from the previous night. I found some wonderful mesclun or mixed salad greens at the Saturday Salcedo market. We had pickled the freshly harvested bamboo shoot I purchased here, as well as pickled ginger we made months ago. And we had some wonderful dayap or key limes in the fridge, part of a huge stash that reader Chrisb brought to the Cebu eyeball last week (I brought home the dayap not used for the kinilaw). And I vaguely recalled Kylie Kwong throwing together a salad with many of the same ingredients on an episode of her television show a few months back. So what did we have to lose by experimenting a bit???
Into a mixing bowl I added about a cup or more of picked crabmeat. A teaspoon of chopped shallots, the juice of three dayap or key limes, some cracked black pepper, some julienned pickled bamboo and pickled ginger, some chopped fresh coriander leaves, (a little bit of siling labuyo would have been nice) and some good olive oil. Toss this lightly and place on top of some washed and dried mesclun. YUM. Really nice. Refreshing, light and delicious. Would definitely serve this again. A great starter for a fancy dinner at home. :)
19 Responses
Great idea!Yum-yum!
T
Ah-hah…bamboo shoot salad. Not sure if we’ll see bamboo shoot on a American salad bar anytime soon. Looks tasty though.
What is cross crab? I googled it and got mostly wrestling moves.
Crabmeat, specially if you can get lump crabmeat unadulterated with fine flaked bits, works well in any salad that calls for tuna or shrimps. It transforms Russian salad a whole bunch of notches up while Salade Niçoise from which you hold the tuna to replace it with crabmeat is as impressive as a luxe treat as you can get.
@Millet, the Chinese food scandals had a chilling effect on me too. I grew cold on their Fuji apples and a whole lot of other foodstuffs. Just this morning I listened to a Mandarin instructor in Shanghai mentioned that she orders baby formula from Japan for her baby.
Footloose, I should have put quotes around “cross” as I am not sure that is the official name for them… they are basically large alimasag, featured in this dinner by Margarita Fores, and this one with my uncle, that sometimes have a pattern on their shell that looks like a cross, as in Jesus… While their meat is similar to that of blue crabs (what I traditionally call alimasag), these ones can come in as large as a kilo per piece. They are spectacular steamed, chilled and served with garlic vinegar…
Those giant ones remain vivid in my memory. The alimasag we get here are invariably smaller though jam packed with meat and coral.
“Cross” crabs are called Krusan here in Negros. With the cross-like patterns on their back some superstitious folks do not harvest or eat these “sacred” crustaceans.
The salad looks amazingly refreshing. A perfect accompaniment to zubuchon :)
I see, they get thrown from the catch back to the sea and grow bigger until a fisherman with no compunction about munching on a potato chip with an apparition of Our Lady comes along and takes it home or to the market.
Lots of fishermen doing that same thing here. Hook a fish, land it, unhook it, let it jump about on the deck for a few moments and throw it back into the water. All the while the poor fish has had the biggest scare of its life, its whole life cycle passing right in front of its bulging eyes and gasping gills and all for sport and superstition. There’s a pathetic fallacy for you.
A real winner once more from MM. Will make this for our special Sunday dinner. Thanks for sharing.
@ footloose… flashback from fry to die.
That”s what’s great about salads – no rules. You can put a bunch of ingredients together, leftovers and any other favorite items and you end up with a satisfying, delicious and healthy meal!
I just want to share photos I took of Zubuchon’s menu board.
https://givemetravelfunds.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/bookkeeper-sans-serif/
yummy!!!! i think if the shallots are fried golden brown , it’ll be a great crunch for this salad.
We also use this bamboo shoot as a substitute to make the fresh lumpiang ubod as suggested by a friend when we were wanting to try to make this fresh lumpia and it worked really well. Same taste, same texture. Our American guests loved it. Same preparation as the heart of palm.
Out of topic…MM, I made some mango jam yesterday (6 half pint jars and so delicious) and am planning to make some guava jam and jelly as I spotted some guavas in a nearby supermarket. Okay, question is how long is the shelf life of these jams/jellies assuming I followed strict rules of bottle sterilization with the ten minutes boiling water bath after filing the jars? Thanks and more power!
Lee. great shot… wahhhhh… its like “in your face” baby! I miss more the food… wahhhh…
@lee – thanks for sharing the photos and for making my mouth water even more… that is literally like rubbing it in.. (-:
wisdom tooth, in theory, shelf life of a year or so, if you keep them in a cool dark pantry. But personally, I would say try to consume them (or tell friends/family) withing say 9-10 months. The mango may oxidize a bit at the top if you left some air room in the jars… that just means they turn a little darker brown. That is an aesthetic issue, not a safety issue.
Lee, that is too funny. Only you would think to take photos of the ENTIRE contents of the blackboard and only you would come up with a title like that! :)