Crab Louie

"Crab Louie" is a salad that "seems" to be from the early 20th Century, perhaps in San Francisco, or at least first really established there, even if it came there from elsewhere. The dressing is similar to "Thousand Island Dressing,"* although not exactly the same, and this dressing has a little kick, but the hot sauce or cayenne pepper won't fry your tongue, it just adds some "zip." of course, if you like really spicy hot food, go for it, and add more hot sauce or cayenne pepper. You can certainly use Thousand Island and add a little hot sauce or cayenne pepper to it, but this actual dressing is not hard to make. 

As I've gotten older, I'm more sensitive to sour flavors, so I tend to add sweeteners to some foods now, and I do that for the dressing in this dish. I listed honey as "optional" for the dressing, but I made a big spread in the amount from 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon, but some folks may not prefer any honey. 

 

Ingredients (4 servings):

 

12 to 16 ounces lump crab meat or imitation chunk crab meat

4 to 8 romaine lettuce leaves (I prefer a couple of leaves, myself)

4 roma tomatoes, cut into quarter wedges

8 asparagus spears

16 olives, whole or halved

8 green onions (scallions)

4 hard boiled eggs, cut into wedges

 

For the dressing:

 

3/4 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup sour cream

1/4 cup chili sauce

1/2 teaspoon chili powder (I use ancho chili powder)

1 teaspoon minced garlic

1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1 teaspoon hot sauce or ground cayenne pepper (or other ground red pepper)

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 heaping tablespoon sweet pickles (or gherkins or sweet relish), finely chopped

1/2 teaspoon ground black or white pepper

1/4 teaspoon salt  

(optional) 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon honey

 

In a bowl, mix all of the dressing ingredients together. Cook the asparagus in salted water for 3 to 3 1/2 minutes, drain, let cool. In a glass bowl or glass cup (I actually use one of my glass measuring cups), add all of the ingredients, except the honey, if using. Mix everything together well, then give it a little taste to see if you want to add any honey; if yes, I suggest starting with just one teaspoon, mixing it in, then tasting the dressing again to see if it needs more honey. Use the same procedure until you get to the taste level you prefer. You can arrange the component salad parts into separate segments (as I have for the photos below), or you can mix them in together. Each serving gets: 3 to 4 ounces of crab/imitation crab, 1 or 2 romaine lettuce leaves, 1 quartered Roma tomato (or chopped, if you'd prefer), 2 asparagus spears (can be cut into pieces; I left them whole for the photos below), 4 olives (can be halved, if you'd like), 2 green onion, cleaned and trimmed (can also be cut into pieces, if you'd prefer), 1 quartered hard-boiled egg; some dressing on the crab or in a separate ramekin. 

 

* Thousand Island Dressing is easy to make at home, here is the link to the recipe: https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2016/04/homemade-thousand-island-dressing.html

 

 

 

WORD HISTORY:

Ape-The origin of this word is unknown, and there is naturally a good possibility that the word is from some language where monkeys and apes were common animals. What is known is, Old Germanic "apo" was used as a general word for non-human primates of any size. This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "apa," with the same meaning, and it wasn't until circa 1600 that the meaning came to be used for the larger primates, as by that time English had borrowed the word "monkey," which was then used for smaller primates. The spelling "ape" had taken place a few hundred years before that time. The other Germanic languages have forms all meaning "ape, monkey": German "Affe." ^ Low German Saxon, Dutch and West Frisian  "aap," Danish "abe," Icelandic "api," Swedish "apa," Norwegian "ape" (pronounced "ah-pa").

 

^ The high dialects of German often experienced a sound shift of "p" to "f," or sometimes to "pf;" thus English has "pipe," but standard German has "Pfeife" (pronounced like "pfeye-fah"), English "ship," but German "Schiff," English "sleep" (noun), but German "Schlaf."