Maryland is for Crabs

As some of you may have noticed, I was absent last week. It was for a good cause, I assure you. I was celebrating my roots. I was in the bosom of my family, bringing the hammer down on a righteous pile of Maryland's finest hard shell blue crabs.



I was in crab heaven. I can't remember the last time I got high from inhaling copious amounts of Old Bay but don't you know, eating crabs is like riding a bike. Once you learn the rhythm and the tricks, you never forget. Your hands know what to do without even thinking. I'm betting I could be in a coma and if someone put a pile of steamed hard shells on my hospital bed, my hands would pick up a knife and start popping off legs.
I worry about the Chesapeake Bay and the crab population. Every spring I ask my mother for the crab forecast. Will it be a good year, a rebound year or will it be another depressing year as the mighty blue crab follow the oysters into the lore of yesteryear, where old timers speak of both as never ending. Even I can remember there being four sizes of crabs available in the crabhouses, small, medium, large and jumbo and you didn't need to run down to the payday loan with your car title to pay for two dozen jumbo. Those days are long gone.

As are the days when I could easily eat a dozen crabs in one sitting. Still the picking was good and the meat was sweet. There were even enough left over to bring home some lump meat. Couldn't let that go to waste. But what to make with my precious half pound of meat.

Crabcakes were a given but I have to thank Patrick O'Connell for idea of using fried green tomatoes as the "bread" of my crabcake sandwich. Frankly I'm pissed for not thinking this up myself. That particular recipe is in his cookbook, Patrick O'Connell's Refined American Cuisine. There you'll find a beautiful refined dish with pickled okra, a sweet corn relish with a tomato vinaigrette. Here, instead, you'll find my barbarian's offering of a crabcake slider cradled in the tangy, crunchy grasp of panko green fried tomatoes.

This was almost a photo optional post because fried green tomatoes are best right out the fry pan and crabcakes? Let's just say I'm like Daffy Duck in Ali Baba Bunny....

...MINE, MINE, ALL MINE!!!!

Precious Cargo

I love traveling. Meeting new people, eating at restaurants that can only be found in the city I'm visiting. But most of all I love getting things I can't get at home. Like say for instance....

Thank you, Whole Foods Atlanta, for having Jumbo Lump Crab nestled deep in a bed of ice, just waiting for my greedy little hands to snatch it up and practically RUN to the checkout line. Yes, it's true, it wasn't Chesapeake Bay crab but it was still blue crab and even if it was from Florida it wasn't the horrible crap that sits behind the seafood counters in Kansas City. Some damn day someone will have to explain to me how it's easier to get international crabmeat (Thailand, India) in the Midwest than it is to get real crab from the East Coast. But I digress.

The pound of jumbo lump rode the highways and byways to finally land in my refrigerator at home and it's eventual destiny as crabcakes. However crab wasn't the only precious food cargo I came home with. No, I got to meet some real live free range chickens, scratching and pecking in the good Georgia dirt.

You know what happens from all that scratching and grub consumption?

Gorgeous fresh eggs. How could I combine the two into one dish that would make stars of both? An omelet seems too pedestrian. Crab egg foo yung briefly skittered into the picture but let's face it, it's just a Chinese American omelet. I finally decided on a Crab Benedict.

Eggs Benedict is one of those rare dishes I eat out more than make for myself. Whipping up hollandaise for one seems excessive. However since I had already made the crabcakes, poaching some eggs and making hollandaise wouldn't be that much of a stretch. I pulled out my trusty Cook's Illustrated Best Recipes and started the hollandaise thrown down.

I like the way they poach the eggs (break egg into cup, pour egg from cup into barely simmering vinegar water, immediately cover and remove from heat and allow egg to cook for 5 minutes), mine came out perfectly cooked. The hollandaise, while smooth, was bland. Even after a liberal addition of Old Bay. And instead of using an english muffin I whipped up some cornbread as my base.

Let me tell you, while the hollandaise was lacking, the fresh eggs and jumbo crabmeat more than made the difference in this exquisite dish. Thank you Chickory for the eggs and the opportunity to bring this little part of your world home to Kansas City. If you'd like to see more of the The Girlz and their very theatrical life, check out this video.