Neighbor's Favorite: She-Crab Soup & Seared Ahi Tuna

This past Monday morning, when you were slowly recovering from the Super Bowl Sunday food fest of chicken wings, guacamole and beer, did you think, "Why'd I do that to myself?" If so, maybe this is the time to look ahead and decide, "Next year I'm going first class."

If that's your decision, then Lee Boutt has just the meal: crab soup, seared ahi tuna and a good chardonnay paired with freshly made garlic bread and a green salad. "This would be great for the Super Bowl. If your team's winning, you're eating great. If it's losing, you're still eating great.

"But," he advised, "this is not something for people on a diet. It's very rich."

Lee, an insurance broker as well as president and CEO of Boutt Insurance Services Inc. in Yuba City, prides himself on his ability to cook. He attributes that to growing up as the eldest sibling where he did most of the cooking and — he says — marrying women who don't cook. Plus, "I just enjoy cooking; it's a way to relax."

Anyone who's lived on the East Coast knows about she-crab soup; Lee discovered it during his travels and wanted to enjoy it out here. "We were in South Carolina years ago when we went to visit my son who was stationed there in the Air Force. I tasted this she-crab soup. It was really good, but they use the blue soft-shell crab, the roe and all this other stuff. So I just took the basic idea and just went from there," Lee explained. "The hardest thing is when people ask me what I put in it. I'm stymied because sometimes I'll just think, 'That looks good.' and throw it in."

One of the important ingredients in the soup is onion oil. He said he bought some pre-made, but when he got it home and looked at the ingredients, he saw it contained so much more than just onions. What he does now is finely chop his onions and press the juice out through a strainer using his thumbs. He said it tastes so much better than the store-bought oil, and there aren't a lot extra chemicals in the food.

He's also careful about butter he uses. Lee said he only uses the unsalted type, because crab is often washed or soaked in salt water, so it's easy to have too much salt in the soup.

Fresh may not be an ingredient, but it's just as important, Lee said. He said he likes to use the fresh herbs he grows in his garden, because, "It just makes a world of difference," and he picks the lemons from his neighbor's tree where it hangs over his yard.

Lee wanted to use Dungeness crab for the soup, but a week of storms kept the fishermen in port, so he was forced to use king crab instead. He said that while he had to travel to Chico for the main ingredient, the hardest part of the recipe was cleaning the crustaceans, ensuring he didn't get any pieces of the shell in the soup.

When preparing the meal, Lee advises starting the soup first because it has to simmer about 20 to 25 minutes, which gives you plenty of time to prepare and cook the tuna.

The soup is prepared in a double boiler, but if you don't have one, just put a small pot inside a larger pot with water. "You don't want to put the soup right on the stove because it'll burn."

The first step for the soup is making the roux (the flour and butter base for the soup). For this, Lee melts the butter before adding the flour slowly. He advises whisking the

flour as you put it in to avoid lumps while being careful not to overcook. "One important thing when you're making roux: be sure the flour gets cooked, so it doesn't have that flour flavor."

Once that's done, he added crab meat, half-and-half, salt, white pepper, onion juice and the other spices, including lemon zest. Lee said if you don't like half-and-half, you can use regular milk.

"I like to add lemon zest to my recipes, including the crab soup and the wasabi (or Japanese horseradish) sauce. I put some in the soup because it gives it a lemony base but doesn't overwhelm it."

Another recipe modification Lee makes is the omission of sherry. "A lot of the soup recipes call for a little sherry, but I've found that if you just go ahead and dump it in, it's too overwhelming. So I like to serve a little glass of sherry at the table and leave it up to each person to pour in as much as they want into their soup."

While the soup is simmering in the double boiler, Lee turned his attention to the chardonnay-wasabi sauce.

The first step in preparing the sauce is reducing the wine. To do that, Lee poured 1-1⁄4 cups of chardonnay into a saucepan and let it simmer for about 10 minutes. He then added freshly squeezed lemon juice, lemon zest and sea salt. Then he whisked in the butter a piece at a time to avoid cooling the dish; this was followed by the cream. The last step was adding the wasabi. Lee said it's best to add just a little wasabi paste at a time until it reaches the bite you want. He said that he knows the sauce is thick enough when it coats the back of the spoon.

Once that's ready and set to a low simmer, Lee moved on to prepare the ahi tuna (the Japanese name for yellowfin tuna).

Using his food processor, Lee coarsely ground peppercorns and coriander seeds and poured the mixture into a shallow pan. He then took each piece of tuna and pressed it into the spices, making sure each was completely coated.

Next, making sure the olive oil in the pan was hot, he placed the tuna steaks into the hot oil. "I usually cook the first pieces medium-rare, then if there are guests who like theirs done a little more, I cook theirs last."

Lee said the best ways to determine if the tuna is done are to watch how the color changes or poke the meat with your finger — the easier your finger goes in, the more rare the meat is. And he said that you have to be careful not to overcook the fish, because it doesn't take very long to cook.

Once the ahi was ready, he transferred it to a platter where he let it rest for a minute. Then he sliced it on an angle before returning it to the platter and pouring the chardonnay-wasabi sauce over and around it.

"Be sure to serve this with good garlic bread and a good glass of chardonnay," Lee said.

• LEE BOUTT'S SHE-CRAB SOUP

Total preparation time: About 45 minutes

Total cost: About $40 to serve four (plus the wine)

Ingredients

2-3 tablespoons unsalted butter

1-1/2 tablespoons flour

1 quart half-and-half or milk

2 Dungeness crabs (about 1-1/2 to 2 pounds each), shelled

1 tablespoon fresh onion juice, see cook's notes

1/4-1/2 teaspoon white pepper

1/4-1/2 teaspoon mace

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Zest of 1 large lemon

1 bottle of good sherry (not cooking wine)

Cook's notes: To make your own fresh onion juice, finely dice 1/4 of an onion. Using your fingers, press onion pieces through a fine-mesh strainer over a bowl to catch the extracted juice. Yields about 1 tablespoon.

Putting it together

In a double boiler, or a small pan placed in a big pan of boiling water, melt butter. Add flour to butter and whisk until smooth. Add the half-and-half or milk, crab meat, seasonings and zest. Cook over low heat for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Serve with a shot of sherry so that each person can add to their own taste. Serve with a Caesar salad and garlic bread. Enjoy.

• SEARED AHI TUNA WITH CHARDONNAY-WASABI SAUCE

Ingredients

3 tablespoons whole peppercorns

1-1/2 tablespoons whole coriander seeds

2 pounds fresh ahi tuna (sashimi grade, if possible)

1-1/4 cups good chardonnay (the rest of the bottle goes to the chef)

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice (about equal to the juice from 1 small lemon)

Zest from 1 medium size lemon

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 cup heavy cream

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

1-1/2 tablespoons wasabi powder, stirred into a bit of water to make a paste

Olive oil

Putting it together

Crack peppercorn and coriander seeds, making sure their texture is still coarse. Lee likes to use a food processor.

Press both sides of tuna into pepper-coriander mix until fully coated. Set aside.

For the sauce: Simmer wine in a saucepan until reduced by half, about 10 minutes. Add lemon juice, zest and sea salt. Whisk in cream and butter, a piece at a time, until thickened. Add wasabi paste and stir until combined. Taste; add more wasabi as needed.

In a large skillet, heat the olive oil. Add tuna fillets and cook them until done on each side. For rare to medium-rare, cook for about one minute or a little longer on each side, depending on the thickness of the fillets. Slice tuna into 1/4- to 1/2-inch thick slices.

Place tuna slices on platter. Spoon wasabi sauce over tuna and serve immediately with another bottle of chardonnay and enjoy. This dish goes great with fresh salad and sourdough bread.

• • •

Lee, a U.S. Navy veteran, has lived in the Yuba-Sutter area for about 20 years. His wife, Cindy, is a Yuba County Sheriff's deputy. Together they have four children and seven grandchildren.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter John Hollis at 741-2400 or jhollis@appealdemocrat.com.