Crab Napoleons

This is a treasure – elegant, delicious, bright-tasting, modern, and with all the components made in advance, it’s the perfect first course for a dinner party.

This is very simple recipe, with little room to hide subpar ingredients. Use the best and freshest of everything you can get your hands on. Read the entire recipe before you start, and make sure you have everything on hand. This is based on a dish that Eric Ripert served at Le Bernardin in the 1990s; I use crisped puff pastry rather than the thin rice-flour tuiles of the original recipe.

Ingredients #

Instructions #

Pick over the crabmeat to remove any bits of shell and cartilage. If you’re using lump crabmeat, lightly shred.

Peel and core the apple and cut enough into 1/4-inch dice to measure ½ cup plus 1 tbsp. Peel and seed the tomato; cut enough of the pulp into ¼ inch dice to measure 1/3 cup.

Reserve 1 tbsp. each diced apple and tomato for sauce.

The crab mixture #

In a glass bowl, combine the crab meat, the remaining diced apple and tomato, 1 tbsp. chives, 3 tbsp. lemon juice, 1 ½ tbsp. sour cream, 1 ½ tbsp. mayonnaise, and 1 ½ tsp. curry powder. Gently toss to combine well. Cover and refrigerate. This can be done the same day, but I wouldn’t do it much further in advance. Crab is highly perishable.

The sauce #

In a bowl whisk together the milk and remaining tbsp. of lemon juice, sour cream, and mayonnaise and stir in reserved diced apple and tomato, remaining teaspoon of chives, ½ tsp. of curry powder, and white pepper and salt to taste.

Cover and refrigerate.

The assembly #

Right before serving, assemble the napoleons (if you do this in advance, the pastry will get soggy):

Place the bottom half of a puff pastry rectangle on a small plate and top with 2-3 tbsp. of the crab mixture. Place the top half of the puff pastry over the crab filling. Repeat these steps for the remaining 3-5 plates.

Drizzle the sauce around the napoleons, and garnish with diced tomato, chives and a tiny pinch of curry powder.

A note about the pastry #

There are two sad truths about puff pastry. The first is that it is, indisputably, a “production” to make at home. The second is that the frozen store-bought versions just aren’t very good. The original really only has two ingredients: flour and butter. The predominant flavor in the finished product should be butter, and since the frozen varieties are generally made with vegetable shortening they taste like vegetable shortening, which is to say, like industrial lubricant.

The good news is that making your own is definitely doable. Julia Child’s recipe on page 389 of The Way to Cook is the easiest and most workable I’ve tried. Puff pastry freezes beautifully, so pick a lazy (and not too warm) Sunday afternoon to make a big batch to go in the freezer. Sealed carefully to protect it from weird freezer tastes, it will last forever. You’ll have it on hand to produce buttery, flakey pâte feuilletée that (one might casually mention) you made yourself!

On the other hand, you can sometimes find all-butter frozen puff pastry in stores. Trader Joe’s sometimes has it, and I’ve seen all-butter brands at some gourmet groceries as well. If you can find an all-butter brand (such as Dufour), I’d say go ahead and use it, but I can’t really recommend frozen varieties made with shortening. They just don’t taste good.

For this recipe, roll the pastry out 1/4” thick and cut it into 1 inch by 4 inch rectangles with a sharp paring knife. Carefully brush the top with a mixture of 1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp. cold water; be careful not to let the egg mixture drip over the edge, as it will interfere with the “puff”. If you like, sprinkle a bit of crushed pink peppercorn on each glazed rectangle. Bake on parchment paper that’s been sprinkled lightly with cold water, starting at 450 F until the pastry has puffed and browned. Reduce the temperature to 375 F to finish. In my experience, it will look done before it is – we’re aiming to dry out the steamy interior of the pastry too.

Transfer to a rack to cool. Using a serrated knife, carefully split the rectangles horizontally. Store them for a few hours (or overnight) in a sealed plastic container until you’re ready to assemble your appetizer.