Feeling Crabby

Well, phooey! I'm feeling crabby. We live on the edge of the San Francisco bay and that's usually a bonus - except this summer when the fabled fog has blanketed our town most days from early morning 'til noon and sometimes beyond. And the conditions that make for fog make it windy, too - too windy to even enjoy our sheltered deck on the lee side of the house without taking a blanket along. Makes our daytime temperatures a lot more like a chilly spring than a sunny summer.

Just so you understand, I moved here from Rochester, New York. Now, I liked Rochester - it's a fine place full of hardworking, worthy people - but it's the second cloudiest city in the U.S., second only to Seattle. I got more than my share of cloudy days when I lived there. The first year I lived there, out of 365 possibles, we had 65 sunny days. So, I moved here at least partly for the predictable sunshine. I guess one crummy summer in fifteen shouldn't be a cause for kvetching but, when you come from Rochester, it just is.

Crab salad, however, is ample compensation. When you eat crab salad on a ship of sweet summer melon with ripe strawberries snugged alongside like tugboats hugging the hull of an ocean liner, you can forget that it's chilly outside and just enjoy the summery tastes.

The crab isn't local - it came from Washington state in a little plastic tub - but it is Dungeness and it really was lovely, sweet and briny. I just added some minced celery, sliced green onion, a dab of Dijon, a small spoonful of mayo and the juice of half a lemon, all mixed together. I was tempted to go herbal but then decided that when ingredients are as fresh and perfect as this, they don't need primping.

Who needs drugs when you have mood enhancers like this, a lunch guaranteed to make you feel both more and less crabby.

*Of course, I wrote this a few days ago and today the fog is gone! Go figure.

Crabicide

Life is full of funny little deals, even in our dollar-based economy. Someone does a favor for you and you return it with something you can contribute. I walk your dog and you tell me about a novel-writing challenge that will be fun next November. You pick up the newspaper when I'm gone for a weekend and I roll out your trash cans when it's your turn to be away. Favors can be fun, especially when they involve Dungeness crabs.

We were walking Cora down to town to get a cup of coffee when we ran into our friend Ron. Ron is a builder who has always done beautiful work on our house and he's a nice guy, so we always enjoy seeing him. On one job, we traded with him for his building services and he got a terrific birthday present for his wife out of the deal. Win-win.

On this day, we chatted about his vintage 1965 Volkswagen and he was remarking that he doesn't use it enough to keep the battery charged. We have a trickle charger we don't use, so we offered to drop it off at his house. When we asked where he was headed, he said he was going crabbing with a friend. We left the trickle charger on his front porch and, a few days later, four lovely Dungeness crabs landed on our steps in a big white bucket.

We called our pals Janie and Jack to see if they were in a crabby mood; they confirmed that they were. We spread out newspapers several layers thick on the dining room table, laid out the nutcrackers and picks, set out wine glasses and plates of butter. They brought the wine and the sourdough baguette; we supplied the crabs and the venue.

I had never cooked crabs myself - normally, we buy them already cleaned and cracked. I didn't even have a pot big enough for four healthy specimens. So, while I was out grocery shopping I stopped at the local hardware store for this stainless steel monster; it holds something like 16 gallons of water. When the salted water had come to a rolling boil, we committed four counts of crabicide. While the crabs were cooling in the kitchen sink, we watched a YouTube video about how to clean and crack them (don't you just love YouTube?) and we were good to go.

Easily one of the best deals we have ever made.

Arthropoda

I love Wikipedia. While I wouldn't trust it for medical information and sometimes I find it to be laughably incorrect, I do go frequently to the website for a quick lookup of some half-remembered fact that I need to verify or learn more about. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about arthropoda, currently my favorite animal phylum:

"An arthropod is an invertebrate animal having an exoskeleton (external skeleton), a segmented body, and jointed appendages. Arthropods are members of the phylum Arthropoda (from Greek ἄρθρονarthron, "joint", and ποδός podos "foot", which together mean "jointed feet"), and include the insects,arachnids, crustaceans, and others. Arthropods are characterized by their jointed limbs and cuticles, which are mainly made of α-chitin; the cuticles of crustaceans are also biomineralized with calcium carbonate. The rigid cuticle inhibits growth, so arthropods replace it periodically by molting. The arthropod body plan consists of repeated segments, each with a pair of appendages. It is so versatile that they have been compared to Swiss Army knives, and it has enabled them to become the most species-rich members of all ecological guilds in most environments. They have over a million described species, making up more than 80% of all described living animal species, and are one of only two animal groups that are very successful in dry environments – the other being the amniotes. They range in size from microscopic plankton up to forms a few meters long."

All I can say is, thank heavens this is not molting season. Molting season is when it's illegal to catch crabs as they mate, rather like us, when they have taken their clothes off and it's only fair to leave the poor darlings alone when they are making undersea whoopee.

By November, however, their shells are hard again, their dizzy days of salty sex are over, and they are fair game. On the TV news, we watched with avid interest as the crabbers came ashore with the first catch of the season, thousands of wriggling, protesting crustaceans sliding out of the crab pots and into the boiling water. I was astonished by the wealth of the catch, the sheer numbers of crabs out there looking for the crabbers' baits. Better writers than I have written about the bounty of the sea - it is simply mind boggling. That we humans are fully capable of exhausting that bounty amazes and sobers me, too.

Today, however, I'm happily ranged among the consumers. My Beloved brought home two nice, big Dungeness crabs, all cleaned and cracked, as a surprise for me last night. We toasted the start of crab season with a glass of La Crema rosé and feasted on the sweet, sweet meat. A few newspapers and slices of sourdough bread and butter are all we need. When seafood is this fresh, it needs no embellishment whatever.

My Thanksgiving wish for you is at least one meal from the phylum Arthropoda this season.

Crab Sammy

As if all that were not enough, here came My Beloved's Dungeness crab BLT made with applewood smoked bacon and heirloom tomatoes, which he reports was quite, quite delicious. My favorite part was the homemade potato chips, waffled on a mandoline, fried to golden sinfulness and set up like the light sails they were in an anchoring of savory, cheesy "dip."

I could feel him getting better, bite by bite.

Dungeness Crab Weather

In northern California, there are essentially two seasons, the wet and the dry. The temperature around the San Francisco Bay area doesn't fluctuate much throughout the year, so we mark the passing of time by the period when the rains begin and end. Around the end of October it starts raining on and off every few days and continues with sunny breaks between the storms until the end of March. We welcome the rain as it turns our hills from brown to bright kelly green in a few weeks and gives us the Sierra snow pack that we use to drink, bathe and cook for the rest of the year.

In early April, we typically have two windy weeks that dry out the grasses that grew so luxuriantly on the hills during the winter and turns them to the "golden" brown of the dry season. Normally, we then have seven months of dry season when it simply doesn't rain until October again nears its end.

Since I moved to California, Christmas Eve has always meant a feast of Dungeness crab. These large, orange and white crabs with the sweetest of meat mark the start of winter for us here and are another reason I look forward to the rainy season each year. This year, we had our first crab dinner on our pre-Christmas Eve, about a week early. My Beloved's daughters were both going to be away for Christmas, Sarah with her husband's family in Boston and Katie with her boyfriend's family in Texas, so we celebrated early with a warm crab dinner and lots of presents. I'm always in favor of having more than one celebration of a major holiday.

We were joined by Katie's Mom, who brought the soft Italian white wine she had enjoyed in Sorrento with her twin sister and expert knowledge of how to clean crabs. Katie and André supplied the salad, the crabs and the two huge pots of furiously boiling water flavored with Zatarain's Shrimp and Crab Boil into which they dropped the wiggling crustaceans. I'm such a wimp that if I had to kill my own dinner, I'd become a vegetarian. I watched in awe as Katie and André calmly discussed boiling times and cooling times after they clapped the lids on the crabs in the steaming cauldrons.

Once the crabs were cool enough to handle, Tina and Katie showed us how to remove the top shell and the gills, and how to separate the rest of the crab from the undesirable and unmentionable parts inside. Tina hails from Maryland but normally has no Southern accent - when she's cleaning crabs, however, her voice takes on the soft lilt of her birth state. She learned this skill with Maryland's famous blue crabs, and apparently learned it from a Southerner.

The result was this enormous bowl of delectable crab parts ready for the crackers and picks at each place on the table, some delicious cold noodles dressed with garlic butter and Parmesan cheese, and a light, green salad.

After dinner, we had an orgy of gift giving that created a huge mound of wrinkled wrapping paper and made us all wonder where the recession had gone. When My Beloved and I left to drive home, reliving the highlights of the evening, there was a light, misting rain that shined the streets.

Seeking the Dream Crab Sandwich

Back in the '80s, My Beloved frequented a restaurant in the Ignacio section of Novato where they served what he thinks of as the Dream Crab Sandwich. He can't recall the name of the long-gone restaurant but the memory of the crab sandwich is still with him. Twenty plus years later, he searches still for one as full of fresh Dungeness crab on as tangy sourdough bread with a frill of fresh lettuce. His recollection is that there was no sauce and the bread was untoasted, just a heaping serving of the best fresh crab between two slices of excellent bread. It has proved to be elusive heaven - he has never again found one as dreamy.

In Sunol at Bosco's, however, he came mighty close. His fresh Dungeness crab and bay shrimp sandwich was grilled and the shellfish had a light dressing, but it was as fully sumptuous a serving as the Dream Crab Sandwich. The menu offered this combo with cheddar cheese as a melt, but he wanted just the seafood and he made a good choice. Topped with cheese, it would have been too rich - undressed, it was lovely. The accompanying French fries were done perfectly, crisp and golden on the outside, almost melty on the inside. We will happily return to Bosco's in the future - it's a major "find!"

We explored the Niles Canyon on the way home, noting that there's a tourist railway that offers rides down the canyon, an amusement for another day. The drive through the canyon is very scenic on a pretty little two-lane road that we shared with a few other cars and brightly dressed bicyclists hunched over their handlebars.

My Beloved is still seeking the Dream Crab Sandwich so if you have leads to great crab sammies, please let us know. In the meantime, however, we can recommend a trip to tiny Sunol in search of the Almost Dream Crab Sandwich.

In The Moment

Newspaper spread out on the watery glass table outdoors on the deck, cracked Dungeness crab and sliced sourdough baguette at the ready, and My Beloved at ease in his deck chair on a hot spring evening. Rare as hen's teeth here in the Bay area, these warm evenings are treasures to be savored in all kinds of ways as the sun sets so far to the north now that we miss it as it slips down behind the neighbors' houses.

Elegant Leftovers

Remember the garlic crab from a few weeks ago? I do. So, when I saw this pasta with Dungeness crab and garlic (plus fresh tomatoes, Swiss chard, herbs and ParmReg) on the menu at Rooney's, I jumped at it.

Clearly, crab and garlic are made for one another. I slurped up the angel hair pasta, the big chunks of heavenly crab and most of the incredibly flavorful goozle, and still had plenty for lunch the next day. Even lightly reheated in the microwave, this was a delicious combination.

We've been to Rooney's several times now and have never been disappointed. It's small and a little noisy but the food is always good and the service is excellent.

And they have garlic crab pasta.