Dungeness Crab Salad

The best part about crab salad is once you have made it, it can go in the refrigerator/cooler and then you have the base for a few quick meals while under way, or after a long day.

And you can make as little or as much as you want based on the number of crab legs/claws you have left over from the crab cracking the night before.

Since this is the galley edition, the amounts are all going be very approximate, and proportional, since you will always have the amount of crab meat you have.

And since this is my blog, I urge you, as always, to go with your own taste as the final judge.

Ingredients:

Picked leg and claw meat (can use body meat, but that's so good for crab cakes & crepes &...)
Celery and/or Parsley
Red Pepper or Paprika
Onion (purple or sweet or green or...) or Garlic
Mayonnaise
Salt
Lemon or Lime juice

For each heaping cup/large handful of crab meat:
dice or chop fine about 1/4 that amount of Celery and Red pepper (if using paprika, sprinkle in to your taste at the end).
dice a piece of onion slightly bigger than your thumb, or crush and mince a clove of garlic

Toss all these together, and add about a tablespoon of mayonnaise, a pinch of salt and the juice from half a lemon.
Stir together and taste.
Adjust the amounts of ingredients to your taste.

What can you do with this?

Serve it over some of your Big Green Salad - with some warm bread on the side.

Put some on an English muffin (a toasted sourdough one is my favorite), and melt some swiss cheese over it. - Crab Melt!  Beats the flippers off any tuna or patty melt out there.

And if you do bring crab home, and make it there... and there's just too much to eat - it FREEZES!  It is not quite as amazing as fresh.... but what is?
However, you can keep it in the freezer for a few weeks, thaw it in the fridge, and enjoy it your favorite way when you want to impress friends, or just because you deserve more crab.

Steamed Dungeness Crab

So you've made the leap - bought a crab trap and a can of tuna, and dropped it near some other crab pot floats.

You go back, pull it up, and you have crabs - and they are keepers.  This is exciting!

Now what?

The bad news is you need to get these guys cooked pretty soon*.

The good news is cooking is as easy as boiling water, and after they are cooked, separating the tasty stuff from the yeuccchhhh is possibly even easier.

My Favorite Method**:

For the beginner - just leave the crabs whole and live.  Rinse them well with sea water (fresh water is OK too).  For the advanced crabber, get out your gloves, and clean and split the crabs first.

Get a hold of a pot with a Lid (essential) big enough to hold at least 1 crab, with some room to spare.
A "big, ol' crab cookin' pot" is great, but sometimes you just need to work with what you've got.
Line the bottom with smooth, flat rocks, the type that is easy to hold in your hand - the kind you'd think of as "skippin' stones."
[The rocks help hold heat.  With the little dinky galley burners, it takes a long time to bring the water back to a boil, so getting the rocks helps speed the cooking.  Wash them off and use them over and over. ]

Do you have to have rocks?  Nope - but they are handy.

Fill the pot with about 1inch of water - just over the top of the stones.

Bring the water to a steamy boil.
Put the crab in and clap on the lid.

Let the crab steam for 8-11 minutes.

Remove with tongs and let it cool enough to clean.

Cooling in the cockpit

Repeat with the rest of your crabs.  As you get a feel for your stove and the crabs, you can steam 2 or more crabs at a time.

When your crab has cooled - pop the top.

Get your crab to where you are going to rinse your crabs.  This is about to get messy.
You will need running water. The shower on your swim step, a hose, or a friend with a bucket of water to pour slowly over the crab while you are cleaning, are all good options.

Hold onto the shell the one hand, and the legs on one side with another.  Pull up on the shell.
All the soft stuff goes - and you can just rinse it over the side.  It belongs to the sea, so return it there.
Pull off the little "dead man's fingers" the floppy, pointy gills attached to the hard body under the shell.

Now your crab is clean.

Crack it open, extract the meat and munch!

can't talk, eating

- and to complete the perfect meal?
Melted butter (or even clarified/drawn butter or ghee - all the same thing)
Garlic Bread
a Big Green Salad

* Cook your crabs soon.  They can live out of the water for a bit - but they can get too hot or suffocate if it is too long.  Some options are:
Cooling the crab by putting it in your refrigerator in a paper bag.
Making a mini "live well"; If you have 1 or 2 crabs, they can go in your big crab cooking pot, just  change the water every 45 minutes or so.
If you have more crabs, a cooler works great - and change the water every hour.  The more crabs you have, the more important it is the water is changed thoroughly.  The crabs use up the oxygen from the water, and put waste products into it.  If you do not change the water, they can poison themselves if you have to hold them for too long in the same water.
The water changing method also means you can hold your crabs for quite awhile.  We've done it for 6 - 8 hours with no ill affects.  Just don't lose your bucket!

If you are unsure of the health of you crabs, poke them a little.  If they still act annoyed, you are in good shape.

**There are many other methods for cooking crabs, and all of them work pretty much the same - this is just nice for a small galley with a bitty little flame.

It is also a method that works if all you have is a big sauce pan, or a flat bottomed wok - with a lid.

However you cook the crabs, you must have a lid.

     You can also boil a pot of water and cook the crabs that way.  However - the crabs remove a huge amount of heat from the water when you put them in.  Then it takes the water ages to get back to the boil.  Fortunately it is not necessary for the water to be actually boiling to cook the crabs.
     Water boils at 212˚F, and the crabs cook at a much lower temperature.  Up to 3 crabs covered in water that started at boiling will still cook in about 8 - 12 minutes, as long as you keep the lid on, and the pot over the burner to keep adding heat.

You do need the rocks or something else to keep the crabs out of the water, to do the steaming method.
If the crab is half in the boiling water, the water will not come back to steaming temperature for quite awhile, and the part of the crab in the water will cook a different amount than the part out of the water.

Food Related Products that are SCARING ME!

Please vote...

Which of these products is the BIGGEST indicator that we are on that Handbasket ride to somewhere Hot?

Is it the special banana slicing tool?
(Alec says for $10 it should peel it for you too!)

Is it the candy bar (I know it says energy bar... but it is packaged as a candy bar)
named after a disease (I'm sorry dis-eze)?

Or is it Purina Brand frozen treats for your dog... in the Popsicle section?
(I mean - they'll eat the ones the kids drop, or if you are feeling the puppy love,
chicken broth ice cubes would do it)

P.S. I would include the nearly $8.00 1/2 lb (2 sticks) of clarified butter.  But the $8 does cover convenience cost, and DOES give you a jar you can use to put your own ghee in when you figure out how easy it is to make.

Day 6 - Part IV - A restaurant so exclusive you practically can’t find it!

            On this evening of day 6, after Tavin and I were rehydrated, and our core temperature had returned to normal, we met up with Alec after his long day at the Beijing (rented) office.  I had found a Spanish restaurant that was close to a subway stop, and Lonely Planet said was worth the trek. (Spanish food in China, yeah, sure why not?  In the circle of tourist existence we were in, most North/Beijing Chinese food was either crazy expensive or westernized to the point of “no fun.”)

            We followed the instructions to a “T.”  And still were wandering inside and out, about the ground floor of a quite new sky-scraper, looking lost and confused.  A local kindly asked us, “Are you looking for the ‘Spain Restaurant’?”

See the bright lights guiding us around the building?

          

  Why, yes. Yes we were.  It turned out, the entrance to the Spanish Restaurant was all the way around on the back of the building,

Thank goodness the bar guarding the parking lot was reflective
or I would have smacked right into it

 through a parking lot. 

And no, there was no sign outside. 

I know!?  With that garish lighting and that signage it is hard to imagine how we could have missed it!

Fortunately, the food was worth it, and they even had a wine list of appropriately rough Spanish and European wines (nothing too fine) that stood up to all the garlic & pimento/paprika.

And the decor was actually... pretty Spanish.

            Warm and full, we rode the subway back to the hotel, tucked Tavin in, and went down to the blown glass fantasy of a lobby bar, and enjoyed a night cap of chrysanthemum tea, “good for the throat.”  

Good Night.

Day 6 - Part III - Dumplings & Kites & Taxis

            At the end of my last post I made light of getting to the nearest subway.  It was quite a haul, in the freezing cold (actually freezing again), with 2 kilos of tea, and a kid in need of a snack.  But it did give us a chance to walk through a part of Beijing that had little interest in and no time for the casual tourist. 

            One of the more fascinating building projects we saw under way were the new houses in the Hutong, or the old style parts of Beijing.  The old style walled in communities, villages within the city have been torn up by the acre to make way for the new Beijing of sky-scrapers, malls and streets on a grid plan.  

            But pockets of the Hutong still exist.  Many are crumbling, or at least looking rather worse for wear.  However, we saw some rather impressive houses, shiny new, being built into the existing structure – and they had the walls and the same single store construction, but also had new fangles additions like driveways and garages.  And with the dwindling supply of Hutong space, a sprawling pad like that would be no less exclusive and pricey than a penthouse suite with a 360˚ city view.  In fact I might go so far as to say more exclusive since the house owner has possession of the entire building, access to the ground the building is on, and you can get a penthouse suite in any city on the world, Hutong exist only in China, and Hutong with possible access to plumbing and electricity…. Well, a rare jewel indeed.

            After passing new Hutong construction, we entered into a modern shopping district that was still directed at locals rather than tourists, and the shops were large on a modern, American scale, and many of them contained offices of one stripe or another.  Electronics shops also could afford the main street tarrifs.

            We could see this was a city, despite an ever burgeoning car population, still expected large amounts of pedestrian traffic.  Wide, but shoddily constructed, sidewalks were everywhere.  Pedestrian bridges and underpasses (these better constructed) crisscross the major streets.  And it was by these, and the previously mentioned subway ride that we arrived, chilly and tired at the edge of Snack Street.

           

            It was time to go on a hunt for dumplings.  Whatever faults the Chinese culture might have, they are sticklers for fresh food, and to a certain extent it is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get culture when you bother to go get the food for yourself.  (Packaged food – including baby formula - seems to offer too many chances to swindle the buyer.  No wonder custom dictates that you pick your own fish, live, from the tank.)  

           What this all meant was; to find a dumpling shop that afternoon, all I had to do (in my Chinese-language-free state) was look for a kitchen with balls of dough, a steaming kettle, veggies and other dumpling fillings.  

See - a sign for "dumpling shop" even I could read!

            We stumbled, teeth chattering into one that was cozy and clean, and that smelled of steam and tea.  We ordered a pot of Jasmine tea, and wrapped our hands around it while we chose dumplings using the pictures-pantomime-and-point method of ordering.  In a few minutes we had freshly made and steamed pork and cabbage dumplings.  We went with the pork since our server insisted it was very good for a cold day.  Who were we to argue?

            Since these dumplings were being made from from scratch, Tavin and I had some time to fill as we held our tea and warmed up.  And this was the point at which we became very observant of the Beijing Taxi.

            All the taxis in Beijing are the same car, a sort of boxier version of a 90’s era VW Jetta.  And nearly all are two colored,  With few exceptions they are brown with a second color, mostly blue, green, yellow or red.  While we were waiting for the dumplings, Tavin and I each chose a color of Taxi to watch, and whoever saw the most “won.”  Tavin picked blue because he happened to see one of those first.  Wise move.

            I went with green becaue that was what we saw next.  In central Beijing, blue Taxi’s are dominant.  Tavin walked away with the win.  I never did figure out what the color scheme of the Taxis meant.  Another mystery for another day.

He's ahead, so the taxi game continues even as we savor the dumplings.

            After our refuel at the dumpling shop, we headed up the street to a hole in the wall kite shop (thanks Lonely Planet), and found a place to get Tavin one of his own kites.  We couldn’t get anything on the scale of the mega kites we saw soaring above Chao-Yang Park, but we did get a sweet little dragon kite, and a extremely practical wheel winder to bring home to Unka Grampa.

            After that, we were ready to crash (again – I was really coming down with pneumonia, and didn’t know it, or really didn't want to, so I was exhausted).  We hopped a subway home, walked greatfully into the spacious, well heated room, and suited up for a swim in the warm humid pool.  That was True Luxury after a cold, dry tiring day.

Bad Aphids!

The Aphids tried to invade my garden already.

Aphids tried to get a beach head on my Kale seed pods.

I'm letting this one go all the way to seed since I liked it so much -
more of the same please

I barely have anything growing yet, but that was no reason for them not to stake a claim I guess.
The advantage of a tiny garden is you can go hand remove the pests quick.

I've been doing that with slugs too.

This works fine on a small plot, or if you have many hands available, but I don't begrudge people growing much more with less help other means to remove these pests.  After all this is a particularly amazing year for slugs.  I think they got in 2 breeding seasons this year or something!

1st CSA Bag of 2011!

The first bag arrived... and it is time for salad!

Sweet, spicy, bitter with crunchy & creamy.  A little sour and salty from the dressing.

From the bag I had access to:

Arugula - 1 large handful washed and chopped

Lettuce - 3 leaves washed and shopped

Radishes - 4 small mild ones (I would have used fewer spicy ones)

Walla Walla sweets (1/2 of a tiny, young one)

Apples (1/2 of a Fuji sliced into sticks Half the height of the apple)

Tossed some bread cubes with a little oil - toasted them to crispy crunchy

Some mild super soft rinded cheese (in this case Fromager d'Affinois)

The dressing was white wine vinegar, a bit of chopped parsley, a smashed garlic clove and a small spoon of mustard. Then I whisked in walnut oil (olive would have been fine, but this was sitting in my fridge, begging to be used!)  Added salt to taste.  Skipped the pepper.

It was divine as I munched on the salad while nibbling on the cheese smeared on my fresh croutons, and sipping a nice white wine.

But dessert was there too!

Summer strawberries in Cointreau Marscapone

As many strawberries as you think you can eat in 1 sitting (Half in my case - the other half were for breakfast).

The right size dollop of marscapone cheese (sour cream, creme fraiche, greek yogurt all work fine.  Just needs to be thick and creamy to start -  I was just feeling particularly hedonistic in the face of my first strawberries of the summer.)

Stir in dribbles of Cointreau (or Grand Marnier or other orange liqueur) and sprinkles of brown sugar until it tastes decadent and a tiny bit sour.  (You may need a dash of salt if using yogurt)

Place a dollop over your strawberries, and then realize it looks skimpy, and pour it all on.  You only have your first of the season strawberries once a year.

Enjoy in greedy, satisfied bliss.