Frank Camorra's succulent crab dishes

When holding a live crab that I'm about to cook, I recall my childhood, when we spent evenings searching for velvet crabs under slippery rocks near Lorne in Victoria, trying to avoid being washed away by rogue waves. We would take our catch home and the next day fire up the stove, place a pot of salty water on to boil and cook the crabs quickly. Once they were chilled, we would all pick the meat from the plump bodies.

Australia has an incredible assortment of crabs, from the fierce mud crabs in the Top End or down the Queensland coast, to the blue swimmers along much of the country's coastline. I have heard that around the Eyre Peninsula the blue swimmers are so abundant you can see them crawling on the sea floor in just over a metre of water; sometimes they walk into your crab pot.

These crab cakes are a great light lunch dish, enjoyed with a salad or as a snack with beer in the afternoon.

Russian salad with crab

4 large nicola potatoes, washed and unpeeled

2 carrots, unpeeled

4 eggs

1 white onion, finely diced

1 tsp sea salt

9 piquillo peppers

100g cooked peas

300g garlic mayonnaise

500g blue swimmer crab meat

150g pitted black olives

Put the potatoes, carrots and eggs in a large saucepan of cold water over high heat and bring to the boil. After three minutes on the boil, remove the eggs.

Simmer the potatoes and carrots for a further 35 minutes, or until cooked. Test with a skewer - they should be tender but not too soft. Drain the vegetables and set aside until cool enough to handle.

Peel the potatoes and carrots, and shell the eggs. Dice the potato into 1cm cubes. Don't be too neat, as the rough bits help to absorb the flavour and will break off into the garlic mayonnaise to make a nice starchy sauce. Dice the carrot into similar but neater cubes. Put the carrot and potato into a bowl and immediately add onion, to allow the residual heat of the potato and carrot to soften the onion. Season the vegetables, so they soak up the salt before the garlic mayonnaise is added.

Roughly chop eight of the piquillo peppers and add to the bowl. Add the peas. Add the garlic mayonnaise and stir through the vegetables, working gently to make a sauce without turning the whole thing into mash. Gently mix in most of the crab meat, reserving some for decoration.

Slice the olives, reserving a few slices for garnish, and mix the rest into the sauce. Roughly chop the egg whites from three of the eggs and slice the egg whites of the fourth egg. (Reserve the yolk for another dish: put the yolks in a bowl, cover with plastic and store in the refrigerator - they should keep for three days.) Add the chopped egg white to the mixture.

Put the salad into a serving bowl and smooth over the top with the back of a spoon. Slice the remaining piquillo pepper. Decorate the salad with the chopped egg white, piquillo pepper slices and the reserved olive and crab meat.

Serves 8

Crab cakes

2 eggs

1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 dash Tabasco sauce

1/2 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp horseradish cream

1 tbsp dijon mustard

1 tbsp chopped chives

1/2 tbsp chopped tarragon

4 slices crustless white bread, torn into pieces

1/4 cup mayonnaise

60ml olive oil

450g crab meat

Place ingredients except the crab meat and oil in a bowl and work together well with your hands.

Fold crab into mix and rest for 30 minutes.

Form cakes about 1 tbsp in size and place on a plate. The mix will be quite wet and you will need to be careful when flipping them.

Pour oil into a preheated frying pan. Cook cakes on medium heat and keep at 5cm diameter or they will break up. Place on absorbent paper, serve with hot sauce and lemon.

Makes about 24 cakes