Last night I started with one idea and ended up with something different then I planned. I was going to make a stuffed catfish but I ended up with the really great crab dish.
Crab a la Michael
Ingredients
1/2 Lb of bacon, chopped
4 andouille sausage, diced
2 red peppers, diced
1 yellow onion, diced
4 stalks of celery, diced
3 cloves of garlic minced
1/2 cup of Italian parsley, chopped and stems removed
16 oz of crab
4 tablespoons of butter
8 oz of goat cheese
1 egg
1 teaspoon of celery seeds
1 teaspoon yellow mustard seeds
4 tablespoons of olive oil mayo
2 tablespoons dijon mustard
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon of green Tobasco sauce
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
salt and pepper to taste
Directions
Render off the bacon in a large skillet, remove cooked bacon, place on a paper towel, and set aside. In the same skillet over medium-high heat add the sausage to the hot bacon fat and cook until crisp. Remove the sausage of the skillet and place it on a paper towel and set aside.
Pour off most of the bacon fat from skillet, return to heat and add butter. Once the butter has melted add the "holy trinity", onion, celery, and peppers, to the skillet along with the celery and mustard seeds and cook until soft. Remove from heat and toss the trinity into a large bowl, add to it the garlic, mayo, dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, Tobasco and mix well.
Now add to the bowl the egg and the parsley, whisk well to combine. Next, add the cayenne pepper and the crab and toss well to coat the crab.
Spoon mixture into ramekins and set in a deep pan, fill the pan with water so that the ramekins are sitting on about 1/2 inch of water.
Place in a 350-degree oven for 25 minutes.
After the 25 minutes remove and add a nice slice of goat cheese to the top and return to the oven for 5 minutes or so or until cheese begins to melt.
Remove from oven, remove ramekins from bath and set on individual plates and add the crisp bacon to the top of each ramekin.
Let sit for 5 minutes before serving.
Enjoy cooking