Feeling Crabby
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| "Is that a dipping sauce?" "I guess you could call it that." |
But why go out to a restaurant when you can make it at home? Melissa and I decided to do a crab dinner in the comfort of our own apartment, free to pick the meat out and get our fingers covered in butter (Melissa is actually more demure, and uses her fork). And if you're going to cook crab at home, all the wisdom says you should buy it alive and cook it yourself.
I had never cooked a live crab before, and I was expecting some grim fight to the death, the crab skittering about in order to avoid its fate. The reality is much more mundane. The crab comes out of the refrigerator (where it has been safely enshrouded in butcher paper and left in the vegetable drawer), and it is sufficiently cold that it is listless at best. You rinse it off in running water, and a sort of vague moving of the legs lets you know that it's alive.
You all know what's coming. The grim denouement, the final scene in our languid little horror movie. The crab is tossed (perhaps fitted would be the better verb) into a pot of well-salted, boiling water. The lid is put on to bring the water up to a boil again quickly, and some minutes later, you open the lid and check the crab to see that it is done (break the legs, check the color of the flesh). The shell has become bright red, and all that is left is to break the crab down into manageable pieces.
Though the process is decidedly anticlimactic, it does make one squirm a bit the first time. But I am a firm believer in the idea that people should understand where their food comes from, and realize that long before they get some pre-packaged (or, as with crab, pre-cooked and broken down) piece of meat, it used to be part of a living, breathing creature. But crab is easier than lobster, I suspect, for which most instructions give you fairly precise instructions for paralyzing the lobster before plopping it into the boiling water or steaming it.
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| The Crime Scene |
To go along with our crab feast, I sliced up a lemon, and made two little ramekins of melted butter. (Melissa asked: "Is that a dipping sauce?" I answered: "I guess you could call it that"). The crab was quite good, but one is always reminded of how much work it is to ferret all the meat out of the crab. We kept my poultry shears on the table in lieu of nutcrackers and picks, and passed them back and forth as necessary.
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| A capsized catamaran. Or our salad. |
I also made a little salad of endive, lentils, corn, apple, pecans, and mustard vinaigrette. Despite the abundance of ingredients, this salad came out really well. Especially since I didn't really work from any recipe.
And what to drink with crab and a salad that features corn and apple? Oh, there's an obvious, classic answer, but I mentally resisted, trying to come up with some alternate. Because finding a good bottle of wine made from the chardonnay grape is tough here in California. Though I do have some bottles of a Hungarian chardonnay which is quite enjoyable, and I love authentic Chablis, though I didn't think that style would work well with our dinner when one considered all the parts.
California chardonnay is often made, shall we say, in a particular style. And it is a style I do not like. But some exceptions can be found, and we put our faith in one of our wine club's February bottles: the Il Cuore Mendocino Chardonnay. We were not disappointed. Though we nervously expected the standard buttery, oaky dreck we often find, this wine was bursting with a heady layer of tart green apple. A little bit of grassiness could be found just under the Granny Smith but it was the good kind one finds in a Sauvignon Blanc, not the more unpleasant kind from a wine which is still too young. A note of creaminess from the malolactic fermentation, but it was more a sensation than an actual taste, a presence weighing on the tongue and tickling your memory. A nice finish and good, not overbearing acidity. And the bottle sells for $11. We did something I never thought we'd do: bought half a case for a brunch we had recently. I'm sure our friends thought I had finally gone around the bend.
The crab shell went into the freezer, destined to become crab butter on some lazy day. We may get another crab in before the season's over, but the eating, if not the cooking, is a time-consuming process. Still, this could be the best part about it; Melissa and I enjoyed a pleasant hour working our way through the shell, comparing notes about the best way to get the meat out. It's not the tidiest dinner, but there's a definite charm to enjoying a platter with someone you love.
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