Alaskan King Crab Antipasto

A tradition in our home is that when we have a birthday, we get to eat whatever we would like. My very favorite food is Alaskan king crab. So, for my birthday, I decided I wanted to try Alaskan king crab in a variation of a salad my family discovered when I was in 6th grade, visiting Florence, Italy.

My mother, father, sister Wendy, and I, visited Europe to pick up my brother, Layne, from an LDS mission in Switzerland and France. We spent three weeks traveling in Europe, including several days in my favorite city in the world, Florence. While there, we discovered a deli that served a delicious antipasto salad which included artichoke hearts, mozzarella, salami chunks, black olives, hard-boiled egg, lettuce, mayonnaise and olive oil, all mixed together in a large goblet. We liked it so much, we went back for it three different times and then tried to duplicate it many times upon returning home.

For my salad, I kept to the same theme, but added some ingredients and removed the salami. For one serving, I cut up 2 ounces of heart of palm, used 4 pieces of marinated artichoke heart, about 2 ounces, and 10 whole, medium black olives.

I used five 1/3 ounce mozzarella balls, cutting each one in half.

One-half an avocado, cut into pieces, along with three chopped green onions.

Then 8 1/2 ounces of cold (just thawed) Alaskan king crab, cut up into large pieces.

The above ingredients were mixed with one hard-boiled egg, chopped, chopped up iceburg lettuce, a few leaves of spring mix specialty green and baby lettuce, one-third cup of mayonnaise and a sprinkling of olive oil.

The resulting salad was quite good.

In making it again, I would reduce the amount of crab by about half (the crab over-whelmed the rest of the ingredients, although what a great ingredient to be over-whelmed by!), eliminate the spring greens, and reduce the amount of mayonnaise by one-third or one-half. The king crab is absolutely wonderful and the palm hearts also add a lot.