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>>We eat with our eyes first.

And if you love food, the way I do, art in food is really important.

So today on Tassie's Table, we are going to be making a salad crab l'amore.

So a lovely crab salad to share with the one you love.

So first of all, I have this lovely fresh lump crab and I've got between four and six ounces of that.

And to that I'm going to add a little bit of freshly minced shallot.

Now this is about a tablespoon of shallot, and then I want to take about a tablespoon of red bell pepper that I've also minced and some lime.

So the lime is going to give this a little bit of zest.

It's going to give it a little extra flavor, a little extra kick.

But I want to use the zest and the juice.

So just about the zest, of let's say a quarter of a lime.

Just like that.

Oh, it smells so good.

I love seeing that zest just zip right off of this Microplane.

It's just fantastic and it smells so, so good.

Now let's just cut that lime in half and we'll give a little squeeze.

I just want maybe a teaspoon to a teaspoon and a half of lime juice.

I don't want a lot, but that's just enough.

Perfect.

All right, now I want to take a little bit of just bottled or house made Italian dressing.

I'm gonna take about two tablespoons and just pour right over the top.

And then let's give this a stir.

So what I'm doing here is making the base, the wonderful crab salad that we're going to put on our plate.

And then we're gonna make something so beautiful.

You won't believe that you've made this and it just is so fantastic.

Your guests will not believe you made it either.

So I want to just pour that crab salad right in the center of my plate.

It already smells so good.

I love crab.

And crab in a salad is just so, so nice and fresh.

Now you're going to kind of cover this crab, so don't worry if the pile isn't perfect, that's not a big deal.

Now the next thing we want to do is to take some grapefruit halves and I just have some red grapefruit pieces here and I'm just going to put maybe four, six, whatever I feel like on the plate.

I think I'll just do four for right now, just like this.

I love this salad.

It's always so fresh and I made this first for my husband and we shared it.

That's why to me it's crab l'amore.

All right, now let's take a few short little pieces of asparagus.

Now I just lightly blanched these.

Not a lot.

I just wanted to get a little bit of softness on them, but not tremendously soft.

I don't want them to be over softened or they're just gonna flop on the plate.

I want some texture and I like it when asparagus kind of still snap with my teeth.

So let's go in on the sides like this, kinda looks like a spider at this point or a butterfly or something, but it's really, really great.

Now let's take a few more and we'll put them down here on the ends.

So this is how we're going to build some length for our salad with these lovely asparagus.

There we go.

And then three on the other end.

And I always make sure that I blanch a few extras so that I can just be munching on them as I go through my salad.

Isn't that pretty?

Now I took a cucumber, just a baby cucumber, and I made nice thin slices and then I curled those slices and I put them under a little ice so the curls would just stay.

So I've got these lovely little cucumber curls, they're just so cute.

And I'm gonna pop those on the top.

If they start to come uncurled, no big deal.

Actually, you can even just chop your cucumber if you'd like.

But I like to make fun things.

So cucumber curls are one of those things that I love to do for salads.

So we're going to put just about four right there, just like that.

Okay, now I have some avocado and I have some little micro greens.

I think I'm gonna start with my avocado.

And what I want to do is just take half of an avocado and I've already broken this one open and I want to just kind of scoop it out.

And then I'm going to cut a few pieces.

Now one thing that you can do with this avocado is to cream it with a little bit of lemon juice.

And that works great, but I actually like a nice solid avocado.

I've tried this in a solid avocado.

I've actually tried it with guacamole.

It all works.

And I'm just gonna cut some chunks here.

I love avocado, so I always make sure that I put it anywhere I can in my salads.

So I'm just gonna start plopping some little pieces of avocado, maybe in between these asparagus pieces, just like that.

This is such a delicious salad and it's so good for one person for lunch, but if you're going to share it, share it with somebody you love.

And then just two forks with this and it's just so perfect.

So there's our avocado.

Now let me just take some of those little microgreens.

And these are usually easy now to find in your grocery store.

If you can't find microgreens, take a little leafy lettuce and just put that right on top.

And then what we want to do is just a little drizzle right here of dressing that we have left just all over the top.

Now, isn't that gorgeous?

And you know what?

I have a piece of grapefruit here just staring at me in the face, and I think I might just pop that right in the center for a little bit of color.

So here you have it, this artistic salad crab l'amore.

So I hope you've enjoyed this recipe.

For a whole lot more, you can visit me anytime on Tassie's Table.