Southern Crab Hash

My first dish from the Food and Wine posts.  When I found out I was one of the bloggers selected by Foodbuzz to highlight Food and Wine for a month, I knew right where to start searching for inspiration.  My first email (The Dish) from Food and Wine is Quick Spanish recipes on 9/6/2007.  Needless to say, I didn't have to dig quite that far back.  So many good recipes to try!!! I started my recipe search with The Dish listing the top ten gazpachos from 8/26/10.  I already had most of the ingredients and had gazpacho on the menu.  There were three great recipes so I decided to do a tasting of three for the girls night out crew on Friday.  Then, I went on to the summer produce and found a couple that'll use up the green beans.  Then, the fruit muddled drinks, too many good ones to choose from!  Final stop for the day, Southern specialties.  Of course, the lemon brined fried chicken caught my eye.  I've never made fried chicken.  And, the recipe is from Thomas Keller of The French Laundry.  Awesome.  But, it requires brining the chicken overnight.  Not something I want to dig into when I finally get home from a grip and grin put on by the Financial Planning Association.  Not only that, but Connie's got to leave to play bridge the next evening.  No time for fried chicken.  That'll wait til later in the week.  Hmmm, I'm doing pork tenderloins for Girls Night Out on Friday.  Maybe I should look for a fish or seafood.  As luck would have it, a couple of pages down I found the recipe for Southern Crab Hash. 

So, you ask, how do you get The Dish?  Sign up at foodandwine.com.  They're not pests about sending you emails every time you turn around.  There are nine in my archives from August.  The recipes are built around a theme - like a holiday or seasonal ingredients.  I've gotten a lot of great recipes from The Dish.  Foodandwine is also a great site.  I love their recipe search feature.  I used it several times while I was rounding out the menus with the recipes I'd found. 

On the way home from work, Connie ran by the grocery store.  I got most of the furry kids fed and started in on dinner and one of the gazpachos for Friday evening.  We'd have to hustle to get dinner put together and Connie out the door in time.  This seemed like the easiest recipe of the batch.  Now, I like hash but it's not something I crave.  So, I wasn't expecting to LOVE this.  But, I did.  It was amazing.  It was all I could do to not go nibble when I was done with my serving.  The potatoes were wonderfully creamy and just went perfectly with the crabmeat and cream cheese.  Connie's not a huge fan of potatoes. His first comment when he saw the recipe was, "It sounds like a bunch of potatoes."  Then, he saw the dish and he said, " Oh, it LOOKS like a bunch of potatoes."  But being the good sport he is, he dug in.  And, he too didn't want to quit eating this.  Leftovers for lunch - YAY!

Southern Crab Hash

Ingredients:
2 pounds large red potatoes, cut into 3/4" pieces
5 slices thick cut bacon, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 T olive oil
1/2 t salt
3 oz cream cheese (we used lowfat)
1/4 c milk (we used 1%)
1 1/2 t Worcestershire sauce
pinch cayenne pepper
3/4 lb crabmeat (we used claw meat)
1/8 t freshly ground black pepper
3 T chopped fresh chives

Directions:

Chop the potatoes

Cook them in salted water until they're tender.  If you're using redskins, you don't need to peel them.  Drain the potatoes and set them aside.  In a large skillet, brown the bacon.  I've found that using a scissors to cut the raw bacon into pieces speeds the cooking process. 

When the bacon is nice and brown, remove it from the skillet with a slotted spoon.  Drain all but one tablespoon of the bacon fat.  Brown the onion in the bacon fat.  When it's nice and browned, remove the onion from the skillet.

Add the olive oil to the skillet and heat it til it's shimmering.  (The original recipe called for using 3 T of the bacon fat...way too much bad fat for my taste!)  Add the potatoes and cook them for 6 minutes.  Leave them alone for the whole six minutes.  Avoid the temptation to stir or peek.  Finally, once the six minutes is over, give them a good stir.  Cook them for another 6 minutes.  While the potatoes are finishing, put the cream cheese, milk, Worcestershire and cayenne in a small saucepan on medium heat. 

Stir until the cheese melts.  Add the crabmeat and half of the chives and stir just until the ingredients are combined.  Back to the potatoes.  They'll be nicely browned by this time.  Add the onion and bacon and heat through for a couple of minutes. 

Stir the crabmeat mixture into the potatoes.  Serve topped with the rest of the chives. 


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This post is part of a series featuring recipes from the FOOD and WINE archive. As a FOOD and WINE Blogger Correspondent, I was chosen to do four recipes a week from FOOD and WINE. I received a subscription to FOOD and WINE for my participation.