Granzevola alla Triestina (Crab alla Triestina)

Granzevola alla Triestina (also spelled Grancevola alla Triestina) is a delicious crab dish named after the seaside Friuli town of Trieste. Essentially, this is similar to a stuffed crab recipe. For being one of the simplest dishes that I've made thus far, this recipe certainly caused me a lot of extra work. I found this dish referenced in several English written sources, but for the life of me I couldn't find a recipe for it. The only recipe that I could track down was in Italian. So, to make this dish I first had to translate the recipe into English. I must say though, I did enjoy getting to practice my Italian again, and I was relieved to find that I hadn't lost it altogether!

As you can see in the picture, I served my Crab alla Triestina right on a plate. I don't really make the effort to wow Ryan with presentation anymore. But, if you are serving this for a dinner party or just want to get creative, a fantastic way to serve this is by putting the crab into an empty crab shell. While I used pre-cooked lump crab meat, you can absolutely get fresh crabs and extract the meat yourself, making it that much easier to get your hands on some crab shells for your presentation!

Granzevola alla Triestina

Adapted from Peccati di Gola

-Serves 4 as a first course or an antipasto-

Ingredients:

8 ounces lump crab meat

3 tablespoons breadcrumbs

2 tablespoons olive oil (or melted butter)

Juice from 1/2 a lemon

1 clove garlic, minced

1 sprig parsley, minced

salt and pepper to taste

Process:

Put the crab meat in a large bowl. Add the breadcrumbs, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, parsley, and salt and pepper. Mix thoroughly.
Spread the crab mixture in a thin layer on a cookie sheet. Broil for 2-3 minutes until the breadcrumbs are golden brown. Serve hot.

If you are using crab shells for the presentation, you can either spoon the crab mixture into the shells after broiling it, or you can put the crab into the shells and then put the whole shell under the broiler on a cookie sheet.

Ryan's rating of Granzevola alla Triestina - 4. Hmmm...maybe if I went with the pretty presentation I could have gotten a 5.