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Changurro

Special dressing: Chris Rea (turn player on)

Just before Christmas days, I went to a book shop and searched for the gastronomy section. I found a little treasure among all those cooking books... it's called Cocina de Fiesta Holidays' Cooking, and it's one of those books that shows wonderful pictures, easy to follow instructions and also suggestions to set your table depending on the holiday and the season, ideas to follow to be a good host and so on. The author is a young Basque cook living in Catalonia called Iker Erauzkin. The recipe I followed is Changurro, this was my first time performing it, but I must say that it was really easy. The only problem I found was that it needs some hours to prepare because if you buy the crabs alive (that's what I did) it can take 3 hours to boil them and take all the meat inside (I was cooking for 12!).

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•Ingredients for 4 servings: 1 big spider crab, 2 crabs (see picture) which weight more than 1 kilo each, 1 onion, 1 leek, 2 garlic cloves, 1 teaspoon of flour, 200 ml of seafood cream (you can buy it in the supermarket) or 2 table spoons of fried tomatoe, 2 boiled eggs, ½ glass of Txacolí (it’s a basque wine. I couldn’t find it, so I used white young dry wine instead), olive oil, salt and black pepper.

•Boil the two kind of crabs in a big pot with boiling water a bunch of salt, some small black pepper balls and a bay leaf. Once it stars boiling again count 15 minutes and place the crabs in cold and iced water to stop the cooking process.
•As soon as they are cold, open them and take all the meat inside, place it in a bowl. Proceed the same with all the crabs.

•Add some olive oil (just a bit, we want the veggies to cook in their own water) to a saucepan and cook the onion, leek and garlic at medium/low heat.
•Just before the veggies get golden, add the crab meat, and the flour. Stir for some minutes and add the Txacolí (or some other white young dry wine).

Let the wine reduce while stirring and then add the seafood cream or the fried tomatoe.
•Taste the mixture, add some salt and pepper to fit your taste and leave aside.
•You can have it hot or cold.

•You can use the empty heads of the crabs to present the dish or rather use a Martini glass, for example.
•Once the crab mixture is in place, add some boiled egg grated on top and a spring of parsley.
•Close your eyes and feel the sea in your mouth. MMMMMmmmmmm
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