Try as I might, I haven’t been able to find the French word for crabapple, which is what I wanted to call this amuse-bouche. There is a the French-Canadian pommetier, but my French friends would say that that’s not really French. Lacking a translation, I have to settle on a more traditional naming convention for this dish of nothing more than layers of dried apple topped with crab salad.

This is also a dish where my natural frugalness didn’t, in the end, compromise the results. I went to buy a fresh crab, spring being crab season here, but when I got to the store I was afflicted with sticker shock. The same Dungeness crabs that were selling for $4 per pound a month earlier were now up to $9 per pound, which would be about $18 per pound of meat. As much as I wanted to use one of these crabs, I knew that a single one would produce about 16 portions and I only needed four (and I’m cheap). I stopped at another store on the way home to buy some other supplies, and just happened to walk by the canned-seafood shelf. Out of curiosity, I bought a can of white crab meat produced in Thailand. It was only $2 for a 170 g (6 oz) can, or a little more than $5 per pound of meat. For $2, I had to buy one and try it.

When I got home, I opened the can and set it to drain in my sink. The more I pressed on the lid to expel the water the crab was packed in, the lower it sank. By the time the water stopped dripping, the crab meat filled only a quarter to a third of the can. Oh well, I thought, it didn't cost me much. The meat was very white and totally flaked. I tasted a bit and it didn’t taste bad, but it didn’t have much flavor. But after adding a little salt and bit of mayonnaise, it was beginning to taste pretty decent. Now my problem became whether this mixture would stay okay until I planned to serve it, which was still five days away.

The other main component of this amuse-bouche is the apple. That I already had on the shelf. A while back I had sliced a red delicious apple very thin and dehydrated the slices. Unlike commercially available dried apple slices, these were very, very thin. I started with a slice that was about 1 mm (1⁄25 in) thick and by the time it was dry, the thickness had shrunk to about 1⁄4 mm (1⁄100 in). And at this thickness, one apple mades lots and lots of slices.

An hour or so before service, I split a large jalapeño pepper down the center and removed the seeds and pith. Each half was held flat against my cutting board, skin-side down, and the skin was removed with a large chef’s knife. This left two slices that were about 2 mm (1⁄12 in) thick. The slices were cut into 2 mm (1⁄12 in) cubes and set aside.

When it came time to serve the amuse-bouche, some of the jalapeño cubes were folded into the crab mixture. Three layers were created using an apple slice topped with a dap of the crab salad for each layer. The layers were stacked and pressed down slightly to stabilize them. A few more jalapeño cubes were added to the top for decoration.

I found that these “crabapple” stacks can be eaten with one of two strategies. Either they could be eaten layer by layer or all at once. I liked taking a layer between my fingers and folding it like a taco before eating it in one bit. Very neat. (And that one small can of meat was enough for about 8 portions!)