Serves 4
Preparation time: 40 mins
Cooking time: 40 mins

You’ll need:

• 2 lb of crabs
• 2 oz butter
• 2 oz onion, chopped
• 2 oz carrot, chopped
• 2 oz celery, chopped
• 1 fresh or dried bay leaf
• 2 tbsp cognac
• 4 tomatoes
• 1 tsp tomato puree
• 3 fl oz dry white wine
• 1 sprig of fresh tarragon
• 3 pt fish stock
• 2 fl oz double cream
• Pinch of Cayenne pepper
• Juice of ¼ lemon
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

What next:

1. Bring a large pan of well-salted water to the boil and drop in the crabs.
2. Bring them back to the boil and cook for 2 minutes.
3. Strain and let the crabs cool a little, then chop with a large knife.
4. Melt the butter in a heavy-based pan and add the chopped onion, carrot, celery and the bay leaf.  Cook without browning. 
5. Stir once or twice then add the crab and then the cognac. 
6. Allow to boil off then add the tomatoes, tomato puree, wine, tarragon and stock.  Bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes.
7. Remove the tough claw shells from the soup before liquidising in a processor in batches. 
8. Process in short bursts until the shell is broken into small pieces about the size of a finger nail.
9. Avoid producing pureed shell; the aim is to extract all possible flavour from any meat left sticking to the shell, particularly in the body section, rather than to extract flavour from the shell itself.
10. Strain the soup pushing as much liquid through as possible with the back of a ladle. Then, pass the soup again through a fine strainer before returning to the heat.
11. Bring to the boil, add the cream.
12. Season with cayenne pepper, lemon juice, salt and black pepper.
13. Reduce the volume by simmering if you think the flavour needs concentrating.

To serve:

Serve with fresh crusty bread.