Crab Melt

This one was solely for Cookie Monster. I had some whole wheat English muffins in the fridge and wanted to use them up, so I came up with this idea. It was just crab from a can (from Trader Joe's. I love that store. I can spend hours there, just perusing the aisles and looking at all the interesting ingredients. I can also spend a lot of money there, so I usually go with list in-hand. And then I usually deviate from the list by at least a few items. If the product they are sampling that day is not of the meat variety, it will usually end up in my cart. Those marketing people are genius.).

But I digress.



First I toasted the English muffin just a bit in our toaster oven (no need to turn on the big oven just for this) so it wouldn't get soggy. After all, there's nothing worse than a soggy English muffin. Actually, yes there is. There are a lot of things worse than a soggy English muffin. Things like, oh, I don't know... AIDS, human trafficking, genocide. You get the idea. So, really, if your English muffin gets soggy, it'll still be ok.

But I digress. Are you detecting a theme here at Chez VCK?

Feeling decadent, I want edto make a cheese sauce to go on top. After all, it is a crab melt. (Ok, so I don't actually know what goes on a crab melt. I have never eaten one. If I was with someone who ordered one at a restaurant I would be really curious to find out what's actually in a crab melt. But this is my imagination, my house and my blog, so this is what my crab melt is. So there!).

I combined butter (real butter this time!) and flour in a pot to make a roux. Since we had some half n' half leftover from making ganache (made to go on top of a homemade cheesecake. Sadly, I do not have any pictures of this glorious event, which I am very upset about. It was divine), and I didn't have any regular milk (always non-fat at Chez VCK, unless it's soy milk), I decided to be really naughty and use that in the cheese sauce. I dumped a few healthy glugs into the roux and stirred 'til combined, then added 2-3 good handfuls of white cheddar cheese. Whoo-boy! Calories be damned! I'm makin' cheese sauce! I added a small grate of nutmeg, then just let the cheese melt and the sauce thicken.

Once the sauce came together, I put the crab meat on the (not soggy! Hooray!) English muffin, the covered liberally with sinfully delicious cheese sauce. Then I popped it under the broiler again for just a minute or two, until it looked like this:

See how bubbly and goldenly delicious it looks? I served it alongside Trader Joe's frozen hericort verts mix, which is one of my favorite frozen vegetables. I usually saute some onions and garlic in EVOO before adding the frozen vegetables, just to make it more interesting. And since Cookie Monster is a freak and doesn't like a lot of cooked vegetables, I always end up with a pile of only sauteed onions and carrots--oh, well. More vegetables for me!

I didn't partake in the crab, but I crisped up some extra-firm tofu and poured some of the cheese sauce over that. It rocked.