Name: Softshell Crab with a Sweet Corn Custard, Chinese Sausage, and Garlic Chives
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Chinese
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon salt; 1 bunch garlic chive buds, top 1 inch cut off and reserved for garnish and any dry bottoms removed and discarded, or 2 ounces sugarsnap peas; A few grinds of pepper; Black pepper to taste; 1½ teaspoons salt; ½ cup heavy cream; 2 cups fresh corn kernels, pureed and pressed through a fine-mesh sieve to make just under 1 cup puree; Sugar as needed, to taste; 1 large egg; 1 large egg yolk; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; 1 Chinese sausage (lap cheong), cut into ¼-inch-thick rounds and cooked (see Note); 2 tablespoons Wondra flour; 3 tablespoons neutral-flavored vegetable oil; ⅓ cup fresh corn kernels; ½ cup (1 stick) butter, softened; ¼ cup lobster stock or chicken stock; 4 medium, or “prime,” softshell crabs, cleaned (cut off faces, pull off tails, and remove lungs); Salt and black pepper

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Cooking without Borders

By Anita Lo

Published 2011

About

It’s not unusual to see crab, corn, and bacon brought together in modern American cuisine. That combination certainly helped shape this dish, but so did a Chinese preparation. I was thinking, specifically, of those crab sauces that contain sweet corn and egg. I’ve never worked in a Chinese restaurant, so I’m not entirely sure how it’s done, but my sous chef, who is from Taiwain, thinks it’s made with a can of creamed corn. I imagine you would stir your eggs into the corn so that the protein