Discover-Magazine-moveablefeastscookbook: Ina Fridays: Crab Strudel

Welcome to the first posting of Ina Garten Fridays! A group of us are posting an Ina recipe the first Friday of every month. It ought to be fun because Ina is one of my favorite chefs. Thank you, Alyce, for organizing this. You'll find a list of those participating at the end of each of our "First Friday" posts. If you like The Barefoot Contessa as much as we do, it'll be fun to check in with each of us to see what we've chosen to represent each category. It can be an Ina recipe, or our take on an Ina recipe.

April has been designated appetizers and rather than thumbing through one of Ina's cookbooks, I went to a file I keep on my desktop where I store Ina recipes I've seen on The Food Network I want to try. There it was: Crab Strudel. I used to make a lobster strudel that everyone loved so wanted to compare the recipes. Nothing alike, except for the phyllo. My old recipe had cheese with the lobster and Ina's recipe is curry-based. Hers is actually much lighter (in spite of the butter in the phyllo layers) and they went like hot cakes when I served them. I noticed in the reviews online that many people used Old Bay Seasoning instead of curry...no reason why you couldn't do that if you're not a curry fan. And some others even added Parmesan cheese as well as using Panko instead of regular bread crumbs. Also, you could use lobster, shrimp, scallops OR crab in this recipe. Very versatile.

Crab Strudel
From Barefoot Contessa, Episode: Dinner Date, 2007

Ingredients:

12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, divided

3 scallions, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 teaspoon curry powder

1 pound lump crabmeat, drained and picked to remove shells

2 teaspoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped

1 lime, juiced

Kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

10 sheets phyllo dough (such as Pepperidge Farm)

1/4 cup plain dry breadcrumbs

Method:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Heat 2 tablespoons butter in a medium saute pan, add the scallions and garlic and cook over medium-low heat until the scallions are soft, approximately 5 minutes. Add the curry powder and stir.

Shred the crabmeat into a bowl and mix with the parsley, lime juice, salt, to taste, and pepper. Add the crabmeat to the scallion mixture.

Melt 10 tablespoons of butter in a small pan and set aside.

Unfold 1 sheet of the phyllo dough. Brush the sheet with melted butter and sprinkle with bread crumbs. Repeat the process by laying a second sheet of phyllo dough over the first sheet, brush it with melted butter and sprinkle with bread crumbs until 5 sheets have been used. Spoon a 1-inch wide row of the crab mixture along 1 edge of the phyllo dough. Roll it up. Brush the top with butter and set aside. Repeat the entire process using the all the phyllo dough and crab filling.

Cover a sheet pan with parchment paper. Score the crab strudel diagonally into 1 1/2-inch pieces and bake for 12 minutes, or until the top is lightly brown. Slice and serve.