Smokey Joes Crab Dip

With fear and trembling, we spent some money on crab meat and sundries, to make "Smokey Joe's Crab Dip" (Smokey Joe being a local restaurant). We have seen crab dip on menus, but always hesitated to order it, mainly because nothing was offered to dip in it! Now we know you just dip the bread. It is an appetizer (entree, for those in Australia), largely made up of crab meat and cream cheese, all baked together, often in a bread bowl (ours just in a casserole dish). The recommendation with this recipe was that it went with icy cold beer, and it did. We made it as a main. Captain Fussy admitted to liking it, after we forced him to try it, but could not eat a lot, as it is quite rich. He ate bread and tomato instead.

3 lbs cream cheese (I only used half this. I do not recommend using 3lbs)

6 oz Monterey Jack cheese (prob some sort of tasty would do? not mozzerella)

1/2 oz Worcestershire sauce

1.5 oz horseradish (I used cream of horseradish, which is some sort of condiment. do not use wasabi)

1/2 cup milk

1 oz Old Bay seasoning (locally invented seasoning, used for everything, but esp seafood. Now owned by McCormick. Possibly just look up what is in this and substitute? We are going to try to bring some home!)

1/4 cup minced onion (I finely chopped as much as my eyes would allow, with the fear of Captain Fussy finding chunks of onion as a motivator)

1 lb crab meat

Mix all ingredients except crab meat and whisk together (I had left cream cheese out to soften, and used a potato masher for initial mixing. Not very romantic. Possibly a hand beater would also do). Then gently fold in crab meat (don't use hand beater for this, the crab meat does break up easily, and you want it chunky). Scoop mixture into a bread bowl and bake at 350 F until Crab Dip is hot (about 30-45 mins) serve immediately.

I reckon this would easily serve 8 adults. Buy a round bread loaf about 9.5 inches (25cm?) in diameter to fit all the mixture in, or just do what we did, and buy some ciabatta to toast for the side and cook in casserole dish with lid on. Possibly healthy to add salad or something to it too. Very filling. Don't forget the beer.