Crab and Asparagus Soup

The weather had turned cooler and I had a yen for some hot soup. I found just the thing at Thermomixer’s blog – a lovely Crab and Asparagus Soup recipe that I decided to try. And trust me, this is worth trying.

Do you think I could find any decent crab? Nothing at the local fish shops but fortunately Google helped me find Gambaro’s Seafood Market at South Bank. I bought a crab just to see how easy this would be. I thought about taking the easy option of buying crab meat which they had in a neat little pack but the idea of spending $30 on roughly 250gm didn’t thrill me.

I have cracked crabs in the past at restaurants and remembered it as a difficult exercise but I rolled up my sleeves and dove right into it. Gambaro’s had very kindly “opened” the crab for me which was appreciated and made things a lot easier.

I don’t know how people end up with anything to share. I was really good but only got half of what I wanted from the main body of the crab. By the time I had sampled, well, all of it, there was none left for the soup.

So the next day, I visited Gambaro’s again and bought two crabs which was enough to make half the quantity of soup. I used the crab meat from the bodies of the crab in the soup and later cracked the claws as best I could and enjoyed.

Making this soup was really interesting. I’ve always been impressed when other people have made a lovely delicate soup and this had the same feeling for me.

As nice as even the aroma of cooked asparagus was, it was easily surpassed by the final soup. I enjoyed eating this soup so much that I finished off a second bowl.