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Bisque of Crabs, Kioto
Procure six hard, live crabs, clean well, place in a mortar and pound to a paste. Thoroughly heat one ounce butter in a saucepan, add the paste and cook on a brisk fire for ten minutes, frequently stirring meanwhile; then add two tablespoons brandy, set fire to the brandy, stir with a wooden spoon until the flame goes out, then add one finely minced carrot, one finely minced onion, two minced leeks, one branch minced celery, two branches parsley and three ounces of raw rice. Stir the whole well together once in a while while cooking for five minutes. Moisten with three quarts water. Season with a level tablespoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne pepper and one teaspoon curry powder. Mix well, then let slowly boil for one and a half hours. Place in a bowl one ounce rice flour, one gill cream and one egg yolk; whisk up well with a whisk for two minutes, pour this into the soup and stir while heating for two minutes. Remove, strain through a sieve, then through a cheesecloth into a tureen, and serve.
A classic shell-in bisque, thickened first with whole rice and finished with rice flour, cream and yolk. Everything hinges on the double straining, since the pounded shell is the flavor base and must all be caught before serving.
- Killing the crabsThe original pounds live crabs whole. Chill them in the freezer for 20-30 minutes until torpid, or dispatch them by splitting the underside lengthwise, before breaking them up. Cook them the same day.
- Mortar or machineA food processor does in seconds what the mortar does by hand, but pulse rather than puree; you want coarse fragments of shell that will give up flavor and then strain out cleanly. A blender is more likely to reduce shell to grit that clogs the cheesecloth.
- Archaic measuresA gill is half a cup. A saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon, so two of cayenne is a half teaspoon, which is assertive but not extreme in three quarts. "Branch" of celery or parsley means one rib or one sprig.
- Brisk fireMedium-high heat. The ten minutes of frying the crab paste is where the color and depth come from, so let it catch and toast slightly rather than steaming.
- Flaming the brandyPull the pan off the burner before adding the brandy, then light it and return it to the heat. Two tablespoons in a hot pan will flare higher than expected under a range hood.
- The two ricesThe three ounces of raw rice (about a scant half cup) cooks to mush over the long simmer and is the body of the soup; it is strained out with the shell. The ounce of rice flour at the end, roughly three tablespoons, is a separate finishing thickener. They are not interchangeable.
- The liaisonWhisk a ladle of hot soup into the cream, rice flour and yolk before pouring it back, and hold the pot below a simmer for the two minutes. Boiling after the yolk goes in will curdle it and no amount of straining will fix the texture.
- StrainingPress hard through a sieve to extract everything the shell holds, then pass the liquid through damp cheesecloth. Skip the second pass and you get shell splinters in the bowl.
- YieldThree quarts of water reduces over the hour and a half to roughly two quarts of finished soup: eight first-course servings.
"Bisque" originally meant exactly this kind of soup, built by pounding crustacean shells and thickening the strained liquid with rice; the name is generally traced to the Bay of Biscay, though the connection is traditional rather than documented. What is genuinely old about it is the technique: using the whole animal, shell included, as the flavoring and then removing every trace of it, is a piece of professional French kitchen economy that long predates the name on the recipe.