DUNGENESS CRAB, HOT

We have a couple holiday food rituals in our home. The best one is the Dungeness Crab Feast. This involves the kitchen table spread with newspaper, a loaf of sourdough bread, a jar of Best Food’s mayonnaise, a couple sliced lemons and a whole cracked crab at each person’s place. And a very cold bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

I was in my twenties before I realized that people ate crab any other way. Sure you could add mayonnaise to crab or even indulge in a crab sandwich at Fenton’s. But hot crab? Why? Here is the dish that introduced me to the pleasures of cooking with crab. It is an elegant dish served to me by one of the first real gourmets I ever knew. Once I get my fill of crab a la kitchen table this is where I turn for my Dungeness fix.

CRAB A LA CLARENDON

½ cup mayonnaise (Best Food’s Brand)

1 tablespoon each lemon juice, white wine vinegar

½ teaspoon dry mustard

1 clove garlic, minced

1/4 cup scallions, sliced thin

1/4 tsp salt, black pepper to taste

4 cups green beans, cooked until tender

3/4 pound Dungeness crab meat

1/4 cup dry bread crumbs

3 to 4 tablespoons melted butter

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Blend mayonnaise, lemon juice, white wine vinegar, dry mustard, garlic, scallions, salt and pepper. Stir in green beans and crab. Place in one quart casserole (a souffle dish works well). Top with bread crumbs. Drizzle with melted butter. Bake uncovered until hot, about 10 to 15 minutes. Serves four right away.

Comments

[Carter]

I agree with David, melted butter is the best with fresh crab. This is probably because this is how I first ate crab. Years ago I use to sit on the curb at San Francisco fisherman’s wharf – when it was a working wharf not a tourist trap – with my high school buddies with a fresh-off-the-boat crab cooked in 55-gallon drums of boiling spiced water, with a paper cup of melted butter and a big ole hunk of Boudin sourdough bread. Yum!

[Christine]

The problem at our house is that there's never enough crab left over to put anywhere, let alone into a lovely sounding dish like this.
Our yearly tradition goes thusly: who ever is the one to encounter the first crabs of the season, that person must call home and have the significant other put a large pot of water to boiling. When the crabs arrive home they are immediately plunged into the pot. Butter is melted, lemons are sliced. A bottle of champagne that's always cooling in the fridge is brought out and poured.
Now then, when the crabs are cooked and cracked we stand at the kitchen sink, champagne glasses at one side, drawn butter at the other, and with great gusto -- begin!

[David]

Skip all the other stuff...bring on the melted butter!