Le Chef's Kitchen

During my recent trip to San Francisco I stayed with my friends Ilse and Tommy in their home in the Haight-Ashbury district.  To thank them for their hospitality I decided to cook them dinner the night before I left, and since I was wandering around down in the Fisherman’s Wharf district earlier that day, the obvious choice for a special dinner was fresh dungeoness crab.

Photo Courtesy of Tommy Dewland, M.D.

I’ve featured crab and lobster here before, but this was the first time I had ever cooked these beasts.  They are native to the Pacific, so I don’t run across them all that often on the East Coast.  I bought two crabs for the three of us, and each of them weighed over two pounds.  They are decidedly scary.

Photo Courtesy of Tommy Dewland, M.D.

I found a great fish market right on the wharf that was selling the crabs for $8.50/lb, which isn’t bad.  Lobster here at the Cape costs about $8.00/lb, and there was definitely a lot of meat on these crabs.

They packed the crabs in ice, and I had a nice walk along the waterfront, past Fort Mason and towards the Golden Gate Bridge.  After I dropped the crabs off at Tommy and Ilse’s I went to the grocery store for the other ingredients I needed.  It was there, at the grocery store, that I found this:

That’s right.  $1.99 Chardonnay.  I was compelled to buy it, just to see what $1.99 Chardonnay tastes like. The label described it as having “oakey” and “buttery” tones to it.  There actually were oakey and buttery tones at the end, but you had to get past the Mike Tyson-like punch of alcohol and acid that preceded them. That said…for $1.99 you can’t really expect much, and it was almost drinkable.  I stuck it out for one whole glass before switching to the Sauvingon Blanc I had actually bought for dinner.  This photo makes it seem much classier than it actually is:

Photo Courtesy of Tommy Dewland, M.D.

Dungeoness Crab with Southwestern Chipotle Polenta (serves 4)

• 2 large dungeoness crabs (~2 lbs each).  Can substitute king crab legs, or other types of crab, if desired.
• 1 avocado, pitted and sliced
• 1 cup corn meal
• 3 cups chicken stock
• 5-6 scallions, sliced
• 1 can of chipotle chile peppers in adobo (found in the Mexican food section of your grocery store)
• 2 plum tomatoes, diced
• 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup heavy cream

I served this with two dipping sauces, but I have to say that the crab was good enough on its own to not even need the sauces.  Here are the recipes if you’d like to try them.

Chipotle Crema

• 1 cup whipping cream, whipped
• 1 T adobo (from the can of chipotle chiles)

Beat the cream until firm, and mix in the adobo just before serving.

Garlic Aoli

• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1 T garlic, minced
• 1 T lemon juice

Mix all together well to combine.

Procedure:

Dungeoness crabs are easy to cook.  The simplest way to cook them is to bring a large pot of water to a boil, salt it, and plop the crabs in.  They need 25 to 30 minutes to cook if you use this method, which is what I did.  Alternatively you can clean them first, which involves pinning the crab on its back and using a cleaver and a mallet to chop it in half,  and then removing the gills and washing out the “mustard”, the yellowish internal juices.  This reduced the cooking time to 15 minutes.  I read about this method and decided that I did not want to deal with chopping a large,  live crab with huge claws in half (and I didn’t have a meat cleaver anyway) and instead used the 30 minutes of cooking time to put together the rest of the meal.  As I was cooking, Tommy was busy taking photos of the process, and Ilse was there helping me prep, drinking wine, and generally telling me where to find things in her kitchen.

While the crabs cooked, I prepared the polenta (read more about polenta here).  Bring the chicken stock to a boil.  Whisk in the corn meal to avoid lumps.  Reduce heat to simmer, cover,  and cook for 8-10 minutes.  Just before serving, stir in the cream, cheese, tomatoes, and scallions.  Add 2 T of adobo (to taste) to get the smoky, spicy notes of the chipotle into the polenta.  Save the chipotle peppers to add to quesadillas, dips, and sauces as you see fit.

Once the crabs are cooked, run cold water into the pot until the crabs are cool enough to handle.  Pull the shell off and crack the crab in half.  Each person will get 1/2 a crab, which was plenty of meat.  Remove the feathery gills from each crab, and rinse out the yellowish “mustard” from the crab.  Using a hammer, mallet, or rolling pin, break each of the crab’s claws before plating, or serve with lobster crackers.  One neat tip that I picked up while researching this dish was that you can use the pointy end of the legs as a makeshift pick to remove meat from hard-to-reach spots in the crab.  Nifty.

Photo Courtesy of Tommy Dewland, M.D.

Serve each crab with a helping of polenta, garnished with avocado slices, along with the dipping sauces.  Provide a large bowl for discarding the shells.

Tommy took a few long-exposure timed shots just before we ate.  To good friends, good food,  and$1.99 wine!  Cheers!

Photo Courtesy of Tommy Dewland, M.D.