A cook's Tour of England by Maurice Hassall

As many of you know, my Dad is one of the last "Old School" classic chefs. He is a past examiner
for City and guilds of London Institute, and the Hotel Catering and institutional Management association. Chairman of the Judges, at International festivals of culinary arts. He was also Head of catering at Plymouth College of Further Education before he took on the challenge of Hotelier which he did for 20 years ! He is now retired in Cyprus and spends his time writing about food and looking for new ideas as well as watching some on the new food trends with a smile on his face, sometimes with disbelief !! I therefore think he is experienced enough to get involved with my thoughts on the Great Devon Crab crusade. I told him about my conversation with Mitch Tonks and his enthusiasm about promoting Devon Crab, Dad has now got excited and has been talking "Crab" for the last 7 days, having returned to Devon for a holiday. He referred me to an extract in his recent book:
Seated around the gnarled round wooden table were about ten fisherman all wearing baggy trousers and with knives strapped to their legs. Each man wore a dark blue polo-necked thick oil wool hand kniotted pullover and heavy full-length boots that fought for a place under the table. They were singing words about life spent at Sea in a cornish dialect whilst cracking open a mountain of boiled Crabs scattered over the table. I knocked on the door ! " Come in me 'ansome and take off your wet clothes". I had only ever had an offer like this before when I visted a Gorl Guides camp! Then these kind fishermen made me a Crab sandwich. A thick round of bread was plastered with Cornish butter, piled high with white Crabmeat then a good layer of darl body meat. Only the dead men's fingers and sack had been discarded. no refinements like serving the meat with mustard, salt, pepper and vinegar and adding soft white breadcrumbs. The meat went directly from the shell to the top of the white meat. " we do not put salt, pepper and vinegar on our tasty crab like those foreign English people from up the line" said one of the cornish fishermen. He knocked back another pint of cloudy white Scrumpy and I was given directions to the youth hostel.

This is another example of how Devon crab can be enjoyed !