Yellow Leaves and Crab Linguini

It has been a while. Green has turned to yellow and morning frosts tell that the winter sun is set to wane. My sister, the oracle, has predicted heavy snows for the months to come. Soon it will be dark by 4 and the fashion will turn towards eating evening pies in chairs drawn up by firesides.

Willow has been enjoying walks in Coldfall Woods, and I have been riddling. That was until this morning. I was going to post a blog I'd been hugging over October on soil and the winter sun, but it is raining now, the soil bags have clogged and the sky is grey. That post shall have to wait.

Instead, we walk the woods and Willow chases squirrels up trees. A rude house sits high in one on our course. You have to wonder how it got there. It seems insurmountable to me.

I like grey days. They are good for many things. Today I read Tom Stoppard's Arcadia for the third time this week (anticipate post entitled 'Lady Thomasina Loves a Rabbit Pie' complete with recipe) and fought the urge to buy a pet tortoise. It shall be sleepy and serve as a paperweight upon the desk I am looking to acquire in order to finish my novel.

Perhaps it was tortoise on the mind but after our walk I purchased a crab for lunch. With it was made a linguine, the recipe for which I now share with you.

Shelling an entire cooked crab requires patience. For me, 2 implements help: a lobster fork for removing the white meat, which you can buy here, and a stone pestle, which I use to crack the claws. Anything heavy and hand-sized will suit this job.

You won't require the brown meat for this recipe. This is stored in the carapace (the hard cover which protects the head). It is delicious eaten from the shell with a squeeze of lemon and ground black pepper, or mixed with a little of the white meat for a version of the crab toast recipe here.

From a large crab I garnered 300g of white meat. In my books, this serves 2. A crab looks like a challenge, but an easy way to get past the armour is to remove the claws and wrap in paper before cracking with a pestle. Wrapping in paper helps prevent shell fragments taking lodgement in your home.

Then you must, and I repeat must tackle the abdomen of the crab. This would be the part most often neglected, and sadly so, for it contains the most meat. It is the tightly packed mass that the chelipeds (claws) and walking legs issue from. It is a complex and cavernous maze that if chopped in half and delved into with good earnest, shall reward with even more white meat. More than in the claws. This where the thin lobster fork comes in handy. An agile wrist also help.

Then finely chop half a bulb of garlic/5 cloves. Introduce the garlic to 5 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in a heavy based pan and let the garlic and oil sit in each other's company for a while before putting the pan on moderate heat.

Even though the garlic is less likely to burn this way, keep the heat low and slow so that you do not fry the contents. To the garlic add a heaped teaspoon of chilli flakes, then the crab meat and heat over a gentle flame while you cook the pasta, which needs be 250g of thin linguine, else you'll lose the crab when serving it up.

I would have liked to been at the National Theatre in 1993. Rufus Sewell and the words 'carnal embrace' sit together well together in a sentence. Well, I haven't a time machine, so the plan is to take husband to a fish masterclass at The Hospital Club this Saturday morning and when that happens, you can read about it here.