Laverbread & Crab Souffles with Cockle Sauce
Submitted by oscarpup
Welsh laverbread and crab souffles with a cockle cream sauce. Individual souffles puffed golden with seaweed, fresh crab, and nutmeg. A traditional Welsh seafood dish.
YIELD
8 servingsPREP
60 minCOOK
60 minREADY
120 minThis is proudly Welsh cooking. Individual crab soufflés enriched with laverbread (puréed seaweed, a Welsh delicacy) rise golden and trembling from their ramekins, served with a creamy sauce of cockles and more laverbread. It’s a dish that celebrates the coastline of Wales in every bite.
The base is a classic white sauce: butter, flour, and milk whisked into a thick béchamel. Making a quick crab shell stock to replace some of the milk is an optional step that adds remarkable depth. Just a couple tablespoons of concentrated crab broth transforms the sauce from plain to deeply savory.
Crabmeat and prepared laverbread get stirred into the warm sauce, seasoned with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. The laverbread adds a dark, mineral-rich, almost olivey flavor that’s completely unique. If you can’t source it, nori or spinach work as substitutes, though the flavor won’t be authentically Welsh.
Beating the egg whites until stiff and folding them into the cooled sauce-yolk mixture is the soufflé magic. “Tiring” the mixture (turning it thoroughly) distributes the air evenly. Ten to twelve minutes in a hot oven and they puff into golden domes.
Chef Tips
- Butter the soufflé dishes generously. A well-greased dish lets the mixture climb the sides without sticking.
- Leave a finger’s width of space at the top for expansion. Overfilled ramekins overflow and collapse.
- Serve immediately. Soufflés wait for no one. Have your cockle sauce warm and ready before the oven opens.
- The cockle sauce is simply reserved white sauce thinned with cream, with cockles and laverbread stirred in.
Variations
- Lobster version: Replace the crab with lobster meat and use the lobster shell for the stock.
- Spinach substitute: Use blanched, well-squeezed spinach in place of laverbread if you’re outside Wales and can’t source it.
Ingredients
Directions
If the crab is whole, pull the body apart and pick out all the meat - discarding only the mouthpiece and the grey “dead man’s fingers” that fringe the inside carapace.
For extra flavour, make a stock with crab shell, flavoured with a piece of carrot and a quarter of onion, and boil down to a couple of well-flavoured tablespoons which can replace the equivalent milk in the basic white sauce given above.
Prepare the white sauce; melt the butter in a small pan.
Stir in the flour and fry gently until the mixture is still pale but sandy.
Whisk in the milk slowly, beating until you have a thick sauce.
Simmer for 5 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 400℉ (200℃) gas mark 6.
Stir the crabmeat and prepared laverbread into the sauce.
Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.
Separate the eggs.
Beat the whites until quite stiff. By now the sauce will be cool enough to stir in the yolks.
Fold in the whites, turning well to “tire” the mixture.
Taste and adjust the seasoning. Butter eight small souffle dishes and spoon in the mixture, leaving a finger’s worth for expansion.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes until puffed up and golden.
Meanwhile make the cockle sauce.
Heat up the reserved white sauce with the cream.
Stir in the cockles and laverbread. Season with the salt and freshly milled pepper.
Serve with the souffles as soon as they are ready.
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