Carol and I both noticed the sign in Trag’s supermarket: cooked and cracked Dungeness crabs at $4.99 a pound; winter is crab season in the Bay area. We asked the man behind the counter how big a crab to get, and he said, “Sounds like you haven’t bought a crab before.” We said we had just moved from the Massachusetts coast. “Oh yeah, lobster and all that,” he said. He picked out a crab, cracked the legs, and wrapped it up for us. We took it home and ate it right away…
Carol had never had Dungeness crab before; I’d only had it once in a restaurant. We ate the whole crab in one sitting. It’s better than lobster, with a lighter, more delicate flavor (and no icky green stuff in the guts that you have to decide whether eat or throw away).
The best way to eat it, I’m sorry to say, is freshly killed, like lobster. Joy used to name ours (Voldemort, Quirrell, and the like; or Bush, Cheney, Rove…) so that I’d feel better about throwing a living thing into boiling water. I told her to stop because I felt guilty about assassinating their characters as well as their bodies.
Anyway, not to take business away from our beloved Mark the Seafood Guy at Trag’s, but do try buying them live once before the season ends. That way, however, you do have the icky green stuff. But it doesn’t take much effort to clean it out yourself under the hot water tap.
Crab? Ew. Ick. ick. They look like big bugs. Sorry. I have to say that — I’m allergic to all shellfish. Poo.
They ARE big bugs. Maybe all arthropods would be delicious if they were that big and meaty.
Amy @ 1 — I don’t mind cleaning out the icky green stuff, what I don’t like doing is deciding whether or not I should eat it. See, as a cheap New England Yankee, I don’t want to waste anything, but the icky green stuff in lobsters (which many people eat) I find disgusting. It’s a dliemma.
Jean @ 2 — Remember Mom saying that she didn’t like lobster because it was a trash fish, and a bottom feeder to boot? yet I remember that she ate lobster rolls upon more than one occasion.