Dressed Crab with Samphire and Fennel

Samphire turns up at the fishmonger in June, bundled in loose handfuls, smelling of salt marshes. That's when you know the coast is calling. If the samphire is there, the crab won't be far behind, and the fennel is already sitting in the market looking pale and cool as glass.

This is a plate of assembly, not construction. You blanch the samphire for less than a minute. You shave the fennel thin enough to read through. You dress the crab with lemon and mustard and almost nothing else, because crab that needs disguising isn't crab worth buying. The brown meat goes on in rich, savoury smears. The white meat sits in clean, sweet flakes. Between them they carry every flavour the sea has to offer.

I made this for the first time on a Saturday in July, years ago. The kitchen window was open. The crab came from a man at the market who'd driven in that morning from the coast, the shells still cold from the cool box. I wrote it down in the notebook: crab, samphire, fennel, the smell of lemon on my hands. There are few better feelings than putting a plate like this in front of someone on a warm evening when the light is still good and the wine is cold.

The market decides what goes on the plate. If you can find good crab and a handful of samphire, the rest is a conversation, not a contract. Your kitchen, your rules.