Crab and Roasted Red Pepper Fougasse

Our July 4th weekend began on Friday and I thought I would make something special to start the weekend off. Earlier in the week I found crab legs on sale and just could not resist! We love crab and I bought 4 bunches, not quite 2 lbs worth which I knew would be plenty. But I needed something else to grace the gorgeous crab and decided that some Roasted Red Pepper Fougasse sounded good!


Crab Legs are such a gorgeous color and so dramatic to serve, really nothing is needed except butter and a few minutes for steaming. Thaw crab legs. Put a few inches of water in a pot and bring to a boil. Insert a drop-in steamer (pictured to the right), layer crab legs, cover and steam for a 4-5 minutes until crab is warm to the touch, careful to not over cook!

If you are looking for something to serve for a special dinner and you want to splurge a bit, crab is an excellent choice. But do take into consideration that eating crab is a long, tedious process. It took me almost an hour to finally savor the last morsel of crab but so worth it!






Drawn Butter
Recipe adapted from just about anywhere

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

Cut butter into TBL pieces. Melt the butter over medium low heat or you can melt the butter in the microwave. Bring to a simmer until the milk solids have separated and sunk to the bottom of the pan. Ladle out the clarified butter that is on the top.






For the Roasted Red Pepper Fougasse I used the Italian Semolina Bread from my very favorite bread baking book "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day". The recipe makes 3 loaves of bread, so I halved the recipe for 1 large loaf of Fougasse. I love Semolina Bread and the recipe and technique from ABin5 is about the best I tasted and it's so easy.





Also I baked the fougasse on the grill and the taste was outstanding and so much better then baking it in my oven! Although I've baked pizza on my grill, click here for a step-by-step, this was my first experience with baking bread and it will not be my last! The above picture was taken just a minute or so after I had put the dough on the grill and it had already tripled in size...WOW!

You can find detailed step-by-step instructions on how to roast the red peppers and construct the Roasted Red Pepper Fougasse here.



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