Are you feeling a little bit crabby? C

Yes, I am one of those people who grouches about mince pies in September, and with good reason.

Christmas is special, and should remain so.

This dilution of the effect by dribbling tinsel and cards into the shops as the kids go back from the summer holidays is becoming faintly ridiculous, and the magic of those last few special weeks is diminished.

Some people don’t even take the lights off their outside trees any more.

But, this piece should be with you on the first of December, and as such, I’m allowed to offer up a dish that would be a great starter for any festive parties you’ll be organising.

I don’t cook with crab much – I’ll be honest with you that it’s not my favourite shellfish, for a reason I can’t quite fathom.

I think it may just be too rich for my taste most of the time – I really have to be in the mood for it.

It is, however, my wife Tracy’s absolute favourite, and I love it when she tells the tale of being a young girl in Suffolk, sitting in the kitchen with a boiled crab on a few sheets of newspaper, pulling, picking and scoffing to her hearts’ content.

Whenever it’s on a menu she’ll dive in and absolutely demolish the poor thing, claws scoured, legs chewed, and so little trace of meat left anywhere it’s as if it had been washed up on a beach for weeks.

I find such things a bit fiddly and not quite worth the effort (is this a man thing, I wonder?), but I’m glad T loves her crab, and I’m sure plenty of you do too.

A recent trip to my childhood haunts near Whitby, and the sights, sounds and smells of the trawlers as they puffled into the harbour brought this recipe to the front of my mental Rolodex, and I thought Christmas would be a great time to prepare and enjoy this sumptuous, rich starter.

It’s a smooth luxurious custard made from the brown meat of the crab, enriched with cream and eggs, set above some fresh-flaked white meat.

It’s incredibly silky and strong, so as a counter I thought I’d like to do something lightly pickled to cut through all that richness.

And I have a great standby recipe for what I call a day-pickle. It’s a slightly sweeter, less briny pickling liquid that you can use after only a few hours, so it’s great for softer vegetables like carrot or butternut ribbons, courgette, cauliflower, tomatoes or, as here, cucumber.

I wanted to add a crunchy element, too, so I thought along Scandinavian lines and went for a sort of open sandwich or smørrebrød.

A little cream cheese, bound with some finely-chopped boiled egg would serve as a nice, cool base for our ribbons of just-pickled cucumber, setting off the dish nicely.

You can make much of this up in advance, which, as we all know, is an absolute boon at this time of year.