Salmon & Leek Soup with Crab Toast (Norway)

I love leek, I like salmon, I have no particular feelings towards crab. So my expectations for this dish were rather mixed.  Soph however, was very excited to try it. Salmon is readily available in Munich but crab can be harder to find so we brought one back from France for the cost of €5 - bargain!

The recipe didn't call for a whole crab though, just the meat so the next step was finding out how to get the meat out.  We turned to YouTube and Soph took the reins. 

All of the pulling, chopping, scraping and snipping made it seem quite complicated but Soph appeared to manage it quite well.  

There was a surprising amount of meat in the crab (expecially in the legs) but the weight of the meat was disappointing. We got a little under 300g from a 500g crab.  

Once all of the ingredients are ready, the recipe comes in two parts; the soup and the crab toast.  

The soup was very easy to cook, there was nothing fast-paced or overly time consuming.  I did almost forget to add the dill at the end but Soph reminded me so it worked out ok. We also made one minor adjustment to the recipe.  Allegra says to add the chunks of salmon right at the end and then leave it to sit, off the heat, while you make the toast - which is supposedly enough time to properly cook the salmon.  Soph and I were a little too nervous about this so we opted to add the salmon and leave it on the heat to boil for 5-10 minutes.  We wanted to make absolutely sure that it was in fact cooked.  

For the crab toast, you mix the crab meat with crème fraiche, cayenne pepper and chives and spread it onto toast to be served with the soup.  The recipe didn't say whether the toast should be hot or cold but I decided cold would probably be better. 

Soph and my brother-in-law absolutely loved the crab toast.  I thought it was ok but not particularly tasty; it was quite bland in my opinion. Soph disagreed and, since she eats more crab, I'm inclined to believe her when she says it's a great recipe.  She said that the chives worked very well and the creme fraiche was great at helping smooth the texture without affecting the flavour. The overall view was that it was a great accompaniment to the soup. 

The soup was smashing. The salmon worked very well and made it much more filling. When we were chopping, it looked like there was a lot of leak but as it turned out it was a perfect amount when it cooked.  We will definitely make this one again, when we track down more crab.