A firm favourite at Filey that live in weed covered rocky sea beds and caught in crab pots from the open cobles at Filey. These crabs can grow well over 15cm wide in deep water and is the most common crab that we eat and Edible crabs give the best meat yield from April to November. Male crabs have larger claws than females and provide more white muscle meat, so male crabs fetch higher prices and a crab hatched in Norfolk may walk as far as Scotland!. Tagging experiments have shown that some crabs move over 100 miles a year during their seabed migration. 

Crabs are usually cooked by placing live in boiling water but the crab will shed its legs and the meat is tougher.  However a more humane way of cooking them is to "drown" them first in fresh water beforehand for thirty minutes or, it has been recommended that they be placed in cold water and the application of gentle heat slowly destroys the nervous system, we prefer the drowning method but purists prefer not to do so.

Cooking.
     
Using the largest saucepan you can find, half fill with fresh water and add plenty of salt, say half a cup to a gallon of water ( 150g to 4 1/2 litres) and bring to a vigorous boil.
Drop the Crab in and bring back to the boil.
When the water comes back to the boil start timing. Use twenty minutes for crabs up to 2lb and add five minutes per extra pound.
When the time is up, carefully pour the whole lot into the sink and wash off the crab with fresh water to remove any surplus material.
Allow time to cool then follow the preparation instructions below - click on the pictures for a better view.

Preparation

1)  Carefully twist off the legs and set aside, part the top shell from the lower body or "cart" - you may need to use a strong knife handle to prise them apart.

2)  Hold the "cart" and remove the long greyish looking fingers (gills) ( second picture) and the small 'sac' from under the head , these are the inedible parts of the crab.

3) Spoon out the meat from the inside of the top shell and although it looks unappetising it really is quite tasty.

4)  With a strong knife handle or rolling pin, crack open the big claws and extract the white meet.  The meat from the smaller legs can be taken out this way but this can be quite fiddly.

5)  The "cart" can be broken out by hand (sharp bits here!) or cut in two at its thinnest  part and the white meat "picked" out of the cavities, again this is quite fiddly and time consuming.

5) You can leave the meat as it is or season the white meat with salt and a little vinegar or lemon juice, cayenne pepper can be added and mash the brown meat with a fork removing any pieces of skin. Season the brown meat with salt, vinegar and pepper and breadcrumbs can be added if it is too wet.

6)  Thoroughly scrub and clean out the top shell, press out the lower side pieces by the thumbs along the line and this will make an ideal container to present your crab meat just as they do in the stalls.

7)  If you don't fancy doing all this, buy one readily prepared from one of the stalls on the Coble Landing!

Note how the stalls serve their crab meat - they put the brown meat in one side of the shell and the white meat in the other, then decorate with lemon slices and parsley and use two of the legs to garnish the product.

Crab and Avocado

And now an interesting dish from TV Chef Chris Coubrough

Ingredients

250 grams crab meat
1 Avocado
2 teaspoons chopped coriander
1 lemon
Cayenne pepper
1 tomato
Crème freiche
Red Chilli finely chopped
Seasoning

Peel and dice the avocado and add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, a small pinch of chilli and season.  Finely slice the tomato and season.  Flake the crab meat and add 2 teaspoons of lemon juice, a pinch of cayenne pepper, 1 teaspoon pf crème freiche and chopped coriander and mix.

Arrange tomato slices on a plate and press some avocado into a small cutter on top of of the tomato, top this with crab meat and garnish with crème freiche and coriander.

A great delicacy and is more expensive to buy than the Edible Crab, the lobster is the largest British crustacean and is caught off Filey. The colours vary, can be blue, brownish-blue or reddish with white spots, the antennae are long and red and the whole lobster turns very very red when cooked. The female lobster breeds every two years. Unfortunately, again, the best way to cook it is when it is still alive and it is placed into boiling hot water, however it has been recommended to place the creature in the freezer for a couple of hours.   As the body fluids are pumped around it's system by muscle movement, this slows down its metabolism and effectively puts it to sleep......

Lobsters take less time to cook than crabs but the same system applies.

Using the largest saucepan you can find, half fill with fresh water and add plenty of salt, say half a cup to a gallon of water ( 150g salt to 4 1/2 litres water) and bring to a vigorous boil.
Drop the Lobster in and bring back to the boil, this will not take long.
When the water comes back to the boil start timing. Use fifteen minutes for Lobsters up to 1 1/2lb and add five minutes per extra pound.
When the time is up, carefully pour the whole lot into the sink and wash off the Lobster with fresh water to remove any surplus material and allow time for the lobster to cool off.

Preparation

Pull off the claws and crack them, and remove the white meat, and you can either:

Pull off the tail and peel like a prawn, then cut the body lengthwise in half (remove the grey feathery gills) The top shell will have a little cream in it as does a crab, and the body (where the legs and claws were attached) contains more white meat. The handle of a teaspoon or the prongs of a dining fork are useful for extracting it.

OR

Using a large pointed chopping knife, locate the centre of the cross conveniently located on the top of the shell, and push the point vertically through the shell and down through between the eyes. Turn the crustacean around and with the knife reversed in the same hole cut down through the tail. Separate the meat as described above.

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