Category Archives: crabs

Rock ‘n’ Roll

rock3NEW ENGLAND HAS the Lobster Roll. Out here on the Left Coast, we have the Dungie Roll—unless you want to take advantage of an underutilized seafood and treat yourself to a Rock ‘n’ Roll. 

Rock crabs have less meat than Dungeness crabs, but they have large claws and their meat is sweet and delicious. And while rock crabs aren’t as good as Dungies for a West Coast crab feed—their shells are thicker and require more effort to pick—they’re still really tasty.

3 large rock crabs, shelled
4 soft French rolls or  buns
1 cup shredded lettuce
1 thinly sliced tomato
1 dollop mayonnaise
1/4 cup diced celery tops (the leafy parts)
1 green onion, thinly sliced
1 heaping tbsp chopped parsley
squeeze of lemon
seasoning, e.g., paprika, white pepper, salt

Gently mix together the crab meat, mayonnaise, diced celery, green onion, parsley, lemon juice, and seasonings. Lightly toast French rolls or hot dog buns, slather with mayo, and assemble with shredded lettuce, sliced tomato, and dollops of the crab salad. 

Cioppino

WHAT’S IN A NAME?  In our anxiety-prone food culture we tend to get uptight about the smallest lexical tics and demarkations. For instance, is it a Bouillabaisse or a Cioppino? How about Fish Soup—that seems to work pretty well. Italians mostly call dishes like this Zuppa di Pesce—Fish Soup. Occasionally Ciuppin. And sometimes Brodetto… Okay, you get the idea.

A Brodetto is a regional Italian variation found along the Adriatic that calls for special inclusion of the scorpionfish, or scorfano. Bouillabaisse is the Provencal word for essentially the same thing. All involve a mixture of both finned fish and shellfish, cooked in a tomato and wine-based stew, with peasant bread for sopping up the rich broth.

Cioppino, legend has it, is a New World invention—the word, that is. Italian immigrants shipping out of San Francisco to fish the Pacific ate Cioppino at sea—the catch of the day plus whatever other ingredients they had on board. The word derives from ciuppin, which translates as “chop”—in other words, chop it all together and make soup.

That’s what I love about Cioppinos and their ilk. When you can get past the regional claims, prejudices, and pronouncements, a Cioppino is merely an efficient way to make use of the odds and ends hanging around in the fridge. But to do it right you still need a variety of fish. Make it with either red wine or white; with spicy peppers or saffron; with fennel or celery. Just make it. You won’t be disappointed.

Here are my ingredients this time around. Remember that you can use just about anything that swims in the sea, or that filters salt water, as the case may be. Squid add lots of flavor. Just about any firm white-fleshed fish is a good choice; avoid more fragile-fleshed species such as flounder, sole, and thin cuts of cod as well as the dark-fleshed fish (e.g. salmon, mackerel, tuna) that will overpower the stew.

I used 2 cups of homemade shrimp stock. You can use a cup of clam juice plus a cup of chicken broth, or conventional fish stock. Fish heads are ideal if you can get them; my market was sold out.

2 dozen littleneck clams
2 dozen (or more) mussels
1 lb shrimp, shelled
1 lb bay scallops
1/2 cooked Dungeness crab, broken into leg segments
1 lb rockfish fillets, cut into 3-inch pieces
1-2 cups white wine (or red)
1 28 oz can whole plum tomatoes with liquid
2 cups fish stock (or clam juice, shrimp stock, etc.)
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tbsp tomato paste
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium onions (or 1 large), chopped
2 ribs celery, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 bay leaf
1-2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
fresh basil for garnish
good bread

In a heavy pot or Dutch oven saute the onions in olive oil over medium heat for a minute or two, then add the garlic, chopped vegetables, red pepper flakes, and bay leaf. Cook several minutes until veggies are soft, then stir in tomato paste. Cook another minute and pour in wine and let bubble for a couple minutes. Add tomatoes and stock, roughly chopping the whole tomatoes in the pot. Simmer for a least 30 minutes; longer is better. Add the crab legs and simmer another 15 minutes. When you’re ready to serve the stew, add the fin fish first and simmer for a few minutes, then add the shellfish. When the clams and mussels have all opened, stir in the parsley. It’s ready to eat. Serve piping hot with good crusty bread and some chopped basil for garnish.

As written above, this Cioppino will easily serve six, but for larger groups you can add another can of tomatoes, more wine and stock, extra seasoning, and leave the seafood amounts as is. Or, if serving a smaller group you might consider cutting the shrimp and scallops by half. All this seafood can be expensive when paying market prices, so tinker according to your budget and taste. It’s a very forgiving dish.

Made with Love: Gumbo

A HALF-DOZEN OF us waited in line at the seafood counter. One lady was originally from Baton Rouge, and the couple behind me called Shreveport home. There were some strong opinions about our endeavor. Even the guy behind the counter doling out the crabs and shrimp had something to say on the subject.

A woman who was buying enough seafood and sausage to feed a congregation looked at me skeptically.

“You know how to make a roux, honey?”

“Sure,” I said. “Fat and flour, equal parts.”

She shook her head. “Love, baby. You’ve got to make it with love.”

Dungeness Crab and Gulf Shrimp Gumbo

Stock

1-2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 onion, diced
1 rib celery, diced
1 small carrot, diced
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 lb shrimp, shelled (reserve the meat for later)
1 large or 2 small Dungeness crabs, cooked and cleaned (but not peeled)
2 quarts chicken stock
3 bay leaves

Saute the shrimp shells in oil until red and starting to brown. Stir in tomato paste and cook one minute. Add diced vegetables and saute another minute or two, stirring, before adding stock. (At this point you might want to substitute some clam juice for part of the chicken stock; I didn’t have any on hand and wasn’t about to pay $2.69 for an 8 oz. bottle when I get the clams and their juice for free.) Toss in the bay leaves and bring to a boil, then reduce heat. While the stock is simmering, peel your crab, adding shells as you go. This will help to flavor your stock if you opt out of the clam juice. Save the claws and a couple sections of unpeeled leg for later. I tear off the impossible-to-peel “pinkies” and throw them in whole. Simmer the stock for an hour or two, then strain and set aside (see photo at left; photo above shows the ingredients strained out of the stock).

Roux

Heat 1/2 cup of oil over moderate heat and slowly whisk in a 2/3 cup of flour. Stir regularly for 30 min. The roux should turn yellowish, then a golden brown. You may need to raise heat to get the final deep brown. Scrape into a dish for later.

Gumbo

2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 onion, diced
2 ribs celery, diced
1 can crushed tomatoes
1 green bell pepper, diced
1 lb okra, sliced into 1/2-inch rounds
1 heaping tsp chili powder
1 heaping tsp paprika
1 heaping tsp dried oregano
1 heaping tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp white pepper
1 tbsp filé powder
salt
shelled shrimp
peeled crab
hot links or other sausage
steamed rice

Saute onion, celery, and garlic in heavy pot until soft. Add the roux and cook over moderate heat until bubbling. Slowly stir in the stock and tomatoes. Reduce heat to low and simmer for an hour or two. In a skillet, saute the green pepper and okra in butter or oil and add spices. Deglaze with a splash of water or stock. Add to gumbo pot. At this point I also add the reserved crab claws and sliced hot links, then let simmer another hour. Just before serving add the shrimp and crab meat. Cook a couple minutes and ladle over rice with a sprinkling of chopped scallions. Serves 8.

Crab Cakes

THE KEY TO A good crab cake is in the meat to filler ratio. Adjust however you like, but always remember: the crab is king.

2 Dungeness crabs, picked
1/2 large onion, chopped
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
butter
2 tbsp parsely, chopped
1 egg
1-2 tbsp mayo
1-2 tsp Dijon mustard (optional)
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 lemon
1/2 cup crackermeal or breadcrumbs
Old Bay seasoning

1. Sauté onion and red bell pepper in butter. Season to taste.

2. Remove onion-pepper mixture to bowl. Add chopped parsley, one egg, mayo, a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce, a few shakes of Old Bay, and the juice from a half lemon. Stir together while adding crackermeal or breadcrumbs. Mix in crab last for chunky cakes. The cakes should be just wet enough to hold together. Adjust accordingly.

3. Form into patties and refrigerate on wax paper for 20 minutes or so for firmness.

4. Sauté crab cakes in butter in a large non-stick frying pan.

Boiled Dungeness Crab

As with Maine lobsters, cooking Dungeness crab intimidates many folks. Think Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in Annie Hall, with crustaceans all over the kitchen floor. Really, it’s not so tough if you follow these simple steps. And don’t forget your mantra…

Step 1: Plunge live crab in a pot of salted boiling water. Listen for screams. Kidding! That’s just air whistling out of the shell.

Step 2: After 10-15 minutes or so, depending on the quality of the boil, remove crab to newspapers. Let cool.

Step 3: Lift the carapace off by leveraging from hindquarters. This is most easily accomplished by finding the narrow triangular flap on the crab’s abdomen (see image at right) and pulling it back. Now you can get a finger under the back of the carapace and wedge it off. Pull away as much goop (that’s a technical term) with the shell as possible and dispose. Clean gills and any other additional goop still clinging to remainder of crab. (Note that more advanced crabbers can do this step on the beach by breaking the live crab in two over a rock, which kills it instantly and saves time and mess at home.)

Step 4: Break crab down middle into two mirror sections, as shown in image at top. The crab is now ready for eating or freezing. In my next post I’ll outline the steps for peeling the rest of the crab and making crab cakes.

A note about access: I nearly learned a hard lesson about waterfront access while diving for these crabs. I’d already bagged my limit of five and was swimming back to the beach when I heard a vehicle honking repeatedly. Now try to picture a sole swimmer, decked out in wetsuit, mask, and snorkel popping up like a seal, going, “Who, me?”

Yeah, me.

The guy got out of his official looking pickup and asked me if that was my van in the parking lot. Yup. “Your lucky day,” he said. “I was about to lock the gate behind you.” Turns out this spot I’ve been diving off for a decade or more is currently embroiled in some sort of dispute with an adjacent property owned by the military, and the upshot is that there’s no public access right now—this despite the park benches and other improvements. I just happened to slip in while the gate was open.

Well, I swam my skinny ass back to the beach as fast as I could and offered the guy a crab for his trouble. Bottom line: know your access points.

Crab Feed

When friends come from out of town to visit, I like to give them the opportunity to feel awkward, get dirty, and maybe even impale themselves on a sharp object. I feed them crab. A fresh-caught mess of Dungeness crabs in the shell offers all these advantages, not to mention the reward of sweet, succulent meat that is as much a feature of the West Coast as the blue crab is of the East—only better.

The setup is simple. Newspaper on table, boiled crab on newspaper, beer in hand. There was a time when I melted sticks of butter and left a can of Old Bay out, but I’m over such garish additives now. Crab wants to be eaten neat.

My approach to this time-honored Puget Sound ritual is a little different from most. For one thing, I don’t own a boat. I don’t even have a crab pot. No, I get in the cold cold water—on the crab’s turf. A wetsuit and snorkel are my crab-catching accoutrements. But don’t be fooled. While neoprene gloves may seem safe to the uninitiated, woe to the blasé crab-catcher who allows a careless pinkie to stray into the pinchers of an angry Dungeness…

It’s crab season. For now I’m stock-piling crabs in the freezer, but I’ll post some recipes soon.