Crab two ways and an allotment harvest

Last week I was so taken with Jason Atherton's Maze Cookbook that I bought it, having glimpsed a couple of fantastic crab recipes. As I have the lovely @titianred staying (which involves much boozy putting the world to rights and listening to Leonard Cohen), I had the perfect opportunity to put crab to pan. The first recipe was for crab chowder, involving the underrated brown crab meat. The lovely guys at Seafood and Eat it sell the most wonderful crabmeat and once again provided the protein.

First there's a serious stock to put together: leek, shallot, carrot and garlic are sweated in rapeseed oil (Jason specifies onion and olive oil but hey, I go with what I have). Then when the veg are wilted and golden, it's in with the spice mixture - star anice, lemongrass, parsley and basil stalks, coriander seed and peppercorns.

And I popped in a couple of sprigs of Thai basil from the garden.

Then I added a good squirt of tomato puree and a glass of white wine. The scent was beginning to get really very good.

Next in is a good jug of homemade chicken stock and the mixture bubbles gently for 20 minutes. Strain the stock through a seive, pressing the veggies and spices down to extract all the flavour and then the soup goes back on the heat for the addition of the brown crab meat and double cream, and a final adjustment of salt.

Oh boy. This is an amazingly good recipe. I added a spoonful of white crab meat at the bottom of the bowl before laddeling in the soup. Crab heaven and a noble end for a fine crustacean. We slurped it down.

The second crab dish was a crab toastie - good, but not quite reaching the heights of the chowder. Mix white crab meat with mayo, cream cheese, a dash of soy sauce and a sprinkle of cayenne. Jason's recipe tells you to bake in an oven at gas mark 3 for 10 minutes, but I wasn't quite convinced, so I toasted the bread on one side then pile the crab mixture on the white side and grilled it till bubbling. A good dish but not as good as the soup. But a pretty good supper.

Meanwhile, down on the allotment, life has sprung back into the veg now that we've had some rain. The runner beans - Painted Lady - are going great guns.

I'm so proud of my squash - they're ripening nicely in shades of orange and yellow and green. And we even have a volunteer squash that's sprouted out of the second compost bay.

And after a couple of months of sulking in the heat, the courgette plants have sprung into action, providing the most delicious fruit. I've never loved courgettes until this year.

There are toms and garlic - and a couple of ears of corn from my lovely lottie neighbour Mark. An autumn of mellow fruitfulness.

A walk to Limehouse and some crabby business

I'm on holiday at the moment, and tomorrow's Kent adventure meant that a stomach reducing walk was in order. My first thought was a walk from St Margaret's to Hertford, but Hertford friend Ian was otherwise engaged, so Plan B was the Lea Valley Walk from home to Limehouse. I've done this walk several times before, and it's a gentle seven or eight miles down to the mouth of the Thames.

Just past Ferry Bridge, this huge narrow boat came chugging past. About a mile on, I wondered if David was around - he lives on the narrow boat Essex Buoy.

But it looked shut up. David must be busy working. The walk is almost all towpath along the Lee and Stourt canal. It's an odd mixture - for most of the walk there's enough green to keep the human London softly at bay. But every so often, there's a reminder of what we get up to.

I rather liked this graffiti, while deploring the spelling. Still, patched up, it would be a good slogan for a food blog.

For quite a while, I was walking past the site of the Olympics, but it was hard to get a decent picture. Here are the lock gates at Old Ford Lock, deep into Hackney. And just around the corner...

...clear site of the evolving Olympic stadium, just visible above the canal. I can't wait. I'm a big athletics fan and I've been glued to the Berlin World Champs this week. I signed on to volunteer for 2012 as soon as we won the games.

This sums up the walk for me: cranes sprouting like improbable flowers above the vegetation. You're never more than a literal stone's throw from some wharfs or houses. As I walked, I wondered how nature would take this route back. I'm reading The World Without Us, and it seems that Earth will get along pretty well minus humans. If we don't get our climate act together, this will all be under water.

Around noon, I arrived at Three Mill Island. It's a lovely collection of buildings, including what was once the largest tidal mill on the Thames. Shortly afterwards, you get to the Limehouse Cut, a couple of miles away from Limehouse. Sadly, this is the most boring part of the walk, unrelieved by any greeness. But the curve into Limehouse Basin is great.

And all at once, you're into the flowering of modern flats and stowed narrow boats. And then over to Narrow Street and a clear view of the Thames in its full majesty.

This walk always reminds me how huge the Thames is to the east: a world class river.

I followed the Thames path round to Canary Wharf and slumped on a grassy knoll to scoff my pesto pasta. Then it was back home, mostly overland, via the Docklands Light Railway and a train from Liverpool Street.

And at home I had a pot of crabby goodness waiting. Last week, my Abel and Cole box arrived with a flyer promoting the yumminess of crab from Seafood and Eat it. Enough persuasion already - I love crab, so put in an order for brown Cornish crab. It arrived this morning and I've been mulling over the possibilities. Then I pierced the plastic pot and stuck an eager finger into the goey browness: fab. There's a Tamasin recipe I've memory marked and this was the occasion to use it. I've adapted the quantities for the amount of crab meat.

Little Crab Custards

Mix together 110g crab meat, 2 beaten eggs, 210ml double cream, 1 tsp Dijon mustard, a knife tip of cayenne, 1 tbsp Parmesan, a good pinch of salt. Pour into ramekins, or in my case, the lovely soup dishes I bought on a walking weekend on the Isle of Wight.

These will go into my Remoska for half an hour...let them cool for 15 minutes then serve with toasted sourdough bread and some watercress and orange salad. And some tomatoes...my allotment bushes have provided a fantastic harvest.