Mashed potatoes with crab and XO sauce

Freek van Noortwijk and Guillaume de Beer showed this weekend at their Piepershow on Amsterdam’s Wallen that potatoes definitely don’t have to be boring. In ten minutes, you got three courses with potato in the starring role, making you forget about the existence of pasta and rice for a little while.

The second course was stoemp (mashed potatoes) made with baked potatoes, crab ragù and XO sauce. That may sound quite complicated, but it really isn’t. This recipe doesn’t require much work at all, as you can simply buy the XO sauce ready-made.

Also read: XO sauce on everything

Method
1. Wrap the potatoes individually in aluminium foil with ¼ clove of garlic and sea salt. Preheat the oven to 180 °C. Bake the potatoes for 50 minutes, until tender.

2. Bring a pan with plenty of sea salt to the boil and add the North Sea crab. Turn off the heat, but leave the crab in the pan of water for 10 minutes. Remove the meat from the crab or claws (tap them open with a stone mortar, for example). Mix the crab meat with XO sauce and the spring onion.

3. Peel the potatoes, roughly mash them and mix with salted butter, buttermilk, finely chopped samphire and sea lavender. Serve a generous spoonful of stoemp on a flat plate. Make a well and spoon some of the crab meat into it.

Tip
XO sauce is a sauce from Hong Kong with a high umami content. It is made with dried scallops, dried shrimp, Jinhua ham, shallots, garlic, chilli and oil. You can find XO sauce in a jar at an Asian supermarket.

Photography: Mitchell van Voorbergen