Crab and Cauliflower Bisque

I still don't know who played in the Super Bowl, nor do I care, but I did invite a few people over that Sunday. As usual, the men sat in the living room and watched football while we sat in the dining room and drank wine and ate too much cheese. Since I'm trying to lighten things up a bit, I made a bisque using cauliflower to give the bisque some heft without adding lots of cream.

I adapted this from a John Besh recipe, it was origanally a crawfish-cauliflower soup and it contained a potato and 2 cups of heavy cream. I'm sure that version is way more delicious but this is very nice too.


6 blue crabs
water to cover
bay leaf
black peppercorns
celery and onion bits and peels

2 T. olive oil
1 head cauliflower
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic
1 pinch crushed red pepper
2 T. butter
1 can of corn (yes, a can, that's what I had but use fresh or frozen if you like)
crab stock
1 T. crab boil
chives

First, I made crab stock. I went to buy the crabs and was shocked that I paid just over $4 for SIX blue crabs! Louisiana is a wonderful place sometimes! Anyway, I cleaned them up, covered with water, added some bits of vegetables that would otherwise been composted, a few peppercorns and a bay leaf. I cooked this down for about an hour. Now if you don't live in a place where you can get blue crabs, you could probably use just some seafood stock later in the recipe and buy 8 ounces of the best crab meat you can find.

Once the crabs cooled, I spent the next hours extracting the meat. This is kind of a pain but I put on The Splendid Table and that occupied me pretty well. I finished with just over 7 ounces of meat, after some liberal nibbling of course, and about 3.5 cups of stock.

Heat the olive oil in a pot over medium heat and add cauliflower and onions. Cook until cauliflower softens slightly, about 20 minutes. Then add garlic and cook one more minute. Add the stock and red pepper and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer about 15 minutes to ensure all the vegetables are cooked through. Puree with an immersion blender or food processor. Add a bit of crab boil until the seasoning is to your taste. Do the same with the butter. I liked the soup well enough but I decided to add butter at the end to round it out a little. Add the corn and the crabmeat, sprinkle with chives or green onion to serve.

This is how Besh outlines his recipe. I think you could probably just add everything in the pot at once (except corn and crab), cover and cook until the vegetables are soft. Puree and adjust seasoning. Easy.