Name: Blue Crab Soup with Picada
Yield: Makes 8 First-Course Servings
Ingredients: slices of French bread, toasted; ½ celery rib, chopped; 2 tablespoons olive oil; ¼ teaspoon saffron threads, soaked in 1 tablespoon water for 20 minutes; 12 blue crabs; 7 cups fish broth or water; ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper; 1 small onion, chopped; 8 fresh or canned tomatoes, cut in half crosswise and seeds squeezed out; 5 tablespoons heavy cream or water; 1 small carrot, chopped; 1 cup picada

Preparation info

Makes
8
First-Course Servings

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Splendid Soups

By James Peterson

Published 2000

About

This recipe is inspired by those wonderful soups you find along the Mediterranean that are almost frighteningly pungent with garlic but that seem to satisfy some deep craving for foods with unreserved amounts of flavor.

This soup is flavored with picada—a powerful Spanish paste of garlic, bread, nuts, and olive oil—which can be used to finish any number of soups. Here it is used to finish an already tasty broth made from fresh blue crabs.

The soup can be made entirely