Stolen Recipes

Sunday’s dinner was the result of a disappointing dinner the night before. On Saturday, I was in an Italian restaurant — a chain, but one I had eaten at before and enjoyed. The specials sheet listed “Crab-stuffed Mahi-Mahi” served with Yukon Gold potatoes and a butter sauce. I couldn’t focus on anything else on the menu. I could almost taste the sweet, tender crab wrapped in the mild, flakey fish, glistening with a light butter-sheen. “Almost” was as close as I got. What was served was a plate-full of whipped potatoes big enough to feed most of the Yukon, topped with a razor-thin fillet of whitefish cooked so far past its opacity stage it was barely distinguishable from the potatoes. The entire thing was ladled with a heavy, flour-based gravy that I assume had butter somewhere within. The crab meat, wisely discerning that no respectable crustacean would be caught dead in such a concoction, had apparently escaped somewhere between plating and serving.

One of my rules of life is, I go out to restaurants to eat food that is better than I can make at home. I was sure I could do better, and I set out to make the dish that should have been. On Sunday, I brought home a couple of two-inch thick mahi-mahi filets and a large Dungeness.

As I was cracking the crab and extracting the meat, I realized I would have much more than I needed to stuff the fish. It occurred to me to try to recreate a “Crab Tower” appetizer from a restaurant I’d eaten at about a month ago. Unlike my recent disappointment, the appetizer was quite stunning. I had once before tried to imitate it and failed miserably. Here was my chance to get it right. I portioned off enough crab to fill two three-inch molds and set that in a mix of fresh orange juice, a dash of Grand Marnier and a pinch of sea salt. While that was marinating, I fried and minced a strip of bacon. (The original used thin strips of salmon, but I had none handy). I also thin-sliced and deep-fried a few potato chips. Finally, I made a reduction with orange juice and a little Grand Marnier thickened with a corn starch slurry. I drained the crab and molded the towers, crab, bacon bits and then a potato chip. A nickel-sized dab of sauce went on either side of the towers. This time I got it right. The salt-sweet of the potato and bacon against the crab, orange juice and liqueur were a perfect balance.

Oh, but I still had crab leftover. I feel about appetizers the way some people do about dessert, so, why not another one? This was my third “stolen” recipe for the evening. It is based on a dish I had more than 20 years ago in another, better Italian restaurant in St. Louis — shrimp-stuffed artichoke. Instead of shrimp, I sautéed some breadcrumbs in a stick of butter and added the crab meat I wasn’t planning to use in the mahi-mahi. I pushed the stuffing in between the leaves of the boiled artichokes, and my companion and I spent the next half-hour scraping the edible portions of vegetable and crab stuffing off the leaves with our teeth while trying not to get too much butter on the wine glasses.

And then it was time for the grand finale. I started a beurre blanc from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. As that was reducing, I cut the rest of the potato into sticks and deep fried them. Meantime, I slit pockets into the mahi-mahi filets and stuffed them with most of the remaining crab. I set those under a broiler for two minutes on each side. While that was going, I sautéed some zucchini and carrot sticks (also based on a dish from yet another restaurant) in olive oil and finished them with a little white wine steam bath. I was whisking the butter into the sauce with one hand, flipping the vegetables in the pan with my other hand and fishing the potatoes out of their oil bath and onto towels with the third hand. The fish was done just a little ahead of the rest. I set it under a cover while I plated the vegetables in the center and the potato sticks on top of that. The fish was next, topped with a couple of the left-over potato chips and a sprinkling of the reserved crab. I then sauced the plates with the beurre blanc. Just the smell was heavenly. And the green and orange of the zucchini and carrots set the whole dish off in a picture-perfect display. The mahi-mahi with the crab was exactly the taste I imagined, accented by the butter sauce and supported by the potatoes.

That was the dish I had been waiting for since Saturday evening.