Hermit Crabs

After visiting my fish man and assisting him on his trawler I discovered a great site of Aussie Rock Lobsters all tagged and ready for the markets. Next to the crayfish were nice hermit crabs. I had asked him what do you do with those and he stated they are a bi-product from the crayfish traps. They are a pest they get into the traps and all the bait. I asked can I have some and here we tested the hermit crab. Discovering there is not much meat from them, about the size of a thumb per crab we cooked some on the BBQ and I must say WOW the best seafood ever!... it resembled the flavor of shrimps, crayfish and scallops combined. So after organizing several dozen crabs I will prepare some items for our next tasting menu.

Left is the actual meat from a large crab.

The right shows the skin taken from the flesh.

We panfried the flesh with butter and the results were amazinf with a bright red colour appearing and the taste is sensational. We fried the crab skin and this was a great result in an edible skin tasting of hermit crab. Now for the tasting menu.....

Before we finalise exactly how we want to serve these lovely tasting crabs we tried a few paired flavours to see the response from our customers in the restaurant.

Hermit crab, pernod, celriac, lobster brulee, black truffle, mussels, rice paper. We had a great response from the customers so now the design and layout using our latest toys.

The final take on our Hermit crab challenge. we dcided to keep the unique flavour the crabs had and make a pannacotta from the shells. Pairing the flavour with white asparagus, tomato, aniseed, roe, Native Australian finger lime and surprisingly dragon fruit.