Crab, potatoes, prosciutto, and chive oil

  This recipe involves very few ingredients, and by far the most important of which is the crab meat. Ideally, one should get Dungeness crab meat, but in this part of the country it isn’t widely available (Coastal Seafoods in Minneapolis and St Paul usually has it, cooked, extracted, and frozen in one pound containers). Failing that, buy the most expensive you can find. Do not - repeat, do not - use those small cans of alleged crab meat found next to the minced clams and tuna. That stuff has no taste. 

Dungeness crab or blue crab meat, 1 lb.

Potatoes, 3 or 4 depending on the size

Salt and ground pepper

Olive oil

Prosciutto, 4 to 6 oz., cut in small pieces

Chives, a “bunch”, sliced

Extra virgin olive oil, 1/2 cup

Salt and ground white pepper

Minced pimientos

Place the chives and the half cup of extra virgin olive oil in a food processor or blender and process until smooth. Pour the contents into a sieve over a bowl. Press down on the solids. Discard the solids and keep the clear green liquid. You now have chive oil. Add a bit of salt and some ground white pepper.

Peel the potatoes, cut in half (to speed the cooking process), and boil in salted water. Drain, and when they’re cool, slice 1/4” thick. Brush both sides of the slices with oil - olive, canola, or vegetable. Salt and pepper one side and place on a cookie sheet in one layer. Heat the oven to 425 degrees and bake for ten minutes or so, long enough to begin to brown.

Heat a teaspoon of oil in a frying pan and cook the prosciutto pieces until just barely crisp. 

Heat the crab meat in a microwave until just warm. It’s already cooked, you know. You just want to take the chill off in case it’s been in the refrigerator.

Place some potato slices on each plate (this recipe is for three or four servings), then some crab on top, then some prosciutto, and finally drizzle some chive oil over the whole thing, garnished with minced pimiento.