Crab Salad and Tartar Sauce

CRAB AND SHRIMP SALAD
Serves 4 to 6
3/4 pound fresh crabmeat, preferably from stone crabs from the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico
3/4 pound domestic wild-caught pink shrimp, cooked
1/2 cup Tartar Sauce (recipe follows)
1/3 cup minced fresh organic chives, plus 1 tablespoon extra for garnish
1/3 cup finely diced red onion
6 cups mixed organic baby greens
3 ripe tomatoes, stemmed and thinly sliced
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Sugar
1 ripe but firm avocado, halved, pitted, peeled, and cut lengthwise into thin slices
1 tablespoon minced parsley
With your fingertips, pick through the crabmeat to remove any pieces of shell or cartilage. Transfer the crabmeat to a mixing bowl. Pick through the shrimp to remove any fragments of shell, and then add the shrimp to the crabmeat.
Add the Tartar Sauce, chives, and red onion to the bowl. Gently fold the ingredients together until the seafood, chives, and onion are well mixed and evenly coated with the dressing. If not serving immediately, cover and refrigerate.
On 4 chilled main-course salad plates or 6 chilled appetizer salad plates, attractively arrange beds of the baby greens. Scoop the seafood salad in mounds on the center of each bed of greens.
Arrange the tomato slices attractively around the seafood salad and season them with just a pinch of sugar. Arrange the avocado slices attractively among the tomato slices; then, season both the avocado and tomatoes with salt and pepper to taste and drizzle them lightly with the olive oil. Garnish each plate with the remaining chives and the parsley and serve immediately.
TARTAR SAUCE
Makes about 1-1/2 cups
1-1/2 cups store-bought mayonnaise
1 tablespoon chopped cornichons (tiny French-style dill pickles)
1 tablespoon small rinsed and drained capers
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
1/2 teaspoon sugar
Put the mayonnaise in a mixing bowl. With a spoon or a wire whisk, stir in the cornichons, capers, tarragon, chives, and sugar until thoroughly blended. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use, up to 3 days.
This is the Wolfgang Puck recipe, for me, I play with it and in a simplistic way, combine Shrimp, Shredded Coleslaw Mix, a very light dressing of mayonnaise and salt and pepper. From there I can do anything with it, serve it crackers, on bagel bites or even with fresh grated cheese on it. My version came from the chef at a country club, Jerry Attaway, in Jackson, Mississippi and has fared me very well over the years.