Finest crab on your doorstep – SEAFOOD & EAT IT Ltd

One of the great tastes of the British seaside is surely fresh crab – in salads, in sandwiches, latterly in pasta, or even on its own with lemon and brown bread. While our seaside towns often have lots of places to get and enjoy crabmeat, it’s much harder away from the coast. Even upmarket places like Waitrose, even though they stock dressed crab with mayonnaise and egg, have not been a source of fresh crab for the discerning diner – until now!

Browing around the seafood department of our local Waitrose I noticed a new offering – fresh Cornish crab, hand picked, in white, brown or potted versions, from a company wittily calling themselves Seafood & Eat It Ltd. (The company website confirms that this is after the glorious old joke “I’m on a seafood diet. I see food and eat it!”.

Seafood & Eat It was started by two brothers – Neville, a skipper fishing for crab from Newlyn in Cornwall, and Richard a former London office worker. While many crab fishermen were giving up, Nev has persisted and when his brother decided that his future lay away from the PC and the monthly sales target they set up together with a little help from the Prince’s Trust and the Fisherman’s Mission. The aim was simple – to supply the best quality crab meat to a wider audience. To this end they cook their crab in small batches and painstakingly hand-pick it to get the very finest meat onto your plate. They have been supplying the wholesale trade in Cornwall for some time, and in August 2008 the Waitrose chain began stocking their crab meat products for public consumption.

We first tried the potted crab, deliciously rich and absolutely ready to eat on bread or even (as their website suggests) with pasta. It was so good we moved on to the white and brown meats, and I used them in my own version of a classic crab with linguini and chilli pasta dish. Simply put about 50ml olive oil, a couple of chopped garlic cloves, two or three chopped red chillis, a handful of chopped spring onion and about two strips of finely chopped lemon zest into a pan and cook until it starts to sizzle. Meanwhile cook about 200g of linguini and drain, keeping some of the pasta water. Into the now-empty but still hot pasta pan put the chilli and oil mixture, and add the pasta, 200g crab meat (we used 100g white and 100g brown), the juice of half a lemon (and optional capers) and heat through till it’s hot. Use a splash of pasta water to loosen the mixture if it gets dry. Stir in a good handful of chopped parsley and serve with lemon wedges (serves two).

Seafood & Eat It crab meat is available nationally at Waitrose stores. Now’s an excellent time to try it out in whatever form of crab dish you favour. (And do answer our poll about your crab preferences!) Seafood & Eat It Ltd, Newlyn, Cornwall TR20 8TL, http://www.seafoodandeatit.co.uk/.