Sunday, June 12 2011

Crabby Times

One of the blessings about living on the west coast of Canada is an abundance of very good, very fresh seafood. An ostraconophile like me can basically wallow in an embarrassment of riches most of the year: oysters, clams, prawns, salmon, halibut, anything the Pacific Ocean can dish out, I can dish up. But one of my favorites is crab. Around here you can get Dungeness, Rock Crab and Snow crab on a regular basis. For my money, Dungeness can't be beat: sweet, tender and not insanely expensive (I'm looking at you, snow crab) it's my go-to crustacean.

Usually we just boil up some crabs and serve 'em with a nice salad, a baguette and some butter, easy-peasy. But I've had a hankering to try out a seafood boil. There are a couple of types, The south generally does a seafood boil with shrimp, corn on the cob, sausage, and red potatoes, New Orleans does shrimp, crab, crawfish, corn, sausage and potatoes, and other regions imitate as suits them.The big thing they have in common is the boil gets strained and all the good stuff is piled onto the table (often on butcher paper) and eaten in a giant orgy of crunching, slurping and cries of happiness.

While I always appreciate local cuisine and like to try out restaurants wherever I go, I haven't had a seafood boil that really blew my skirt up (harder than you'd think, given the kind of skirts I wear). Mainly I've always thought that the seasoning that goes into the boil water could do a little more for the food, and that local, utterly fresh seafood could make a brilliant contribution.

Lucky for me, it's Spot Prawn season here in BC. Never seen one?

I had a few minutes to myself in downtown Vancouver last week (I had to kill 90 minutes waiting for a travel permit from the Chinese consulate) just blocks away from the Granville Island public market. I dodged into the market and got some Merida Chorizo, an excellently spicy Spanish sausage. The sausage helps form the flavour profile of the boil, so good sausage choice is crucial to the enterprise.

Saturday, after a full day in the garden, I was ready for a good dinner. T&T market, my favorite seafood seller was in fine form. Not only did I get a brilliant haul of spot prawns

. . . they also had fresh corn on the cob and some Dungeness crab that was only $4.99/lb! Throw in a few baby potatoes, and I was ready to roll.

The biggest part of the effort is assembling the boiling liquid. After that it's just doing a wee bit of prep and then timing everything that goes into the pot so it all comes out done, but not overcooked, and getting together some melted butter, hot sauce and an appropriate beverage. Rather than rely on Zatarains or Old Bay (commercial seafood boil seasonings) I started off with the Cajun trinity, celery, onion and green pepper. To this I added thyme, Bay Leaf, Italian Parsley, chopped garlic, Sel Gris, hot Hungarian Paprika, a couple of lemons, black peppercorns and a dozen chopped Thai chili peppers and popped the whole pot on my Cajun cooker.

You really can't boil 15 litres (about four US-gallons) of water on a consumer-grade stove in any reasonable time. Cajun cookers are propane burners that really crank out the heat.

With the vegetables and seasonings in the pot, I dropped in some baby potatoes and fired it up.

After about 15 minutes the potatoes were starting to soften a little, and in the meantime I got my prep on.

The crabs were perfectly good, but on sale because they were missing a few limbs--perfect for soup--and I lopped the sausage up into fairly big chunks. This is where it gets tricky: crab takes about 7 minutes a pound, on a full boil. Much longer and it overcooks and gets stringy. The prawns would take only two minutes, while the corn would take about 12 or 15 depending on how fresh/young it is, and the sausage needed to go in early to provide flavour, but not too long to dry out (thus the big pieces). In order, I put in corn

Crabs

And sausages

And let it simmer for about ten minutes.

Finally, with two minutes left on the clock, it was time to put my star player in the game: LePrawn James

When Mickey's hand swung over two ticks it was a race to the sink and a waiting strainer.

Finally, it was time to eat. Crabs got cleaned and everything got piled onto a platter.

I have to report it was the best crab boil I ever tasted. The Spot prawns were exquisite. Much like mudbugs (crawfish) you could separate the body and 'suck the head'. Folks from the south are nodding, but many people who've never properly eaten crawfish are looking queasy and addled right now. There's good stuff inside the thorax of the prawn, but it's inside, so you have to go in and get it. While crawfish heads are savoury and quite tasty, Spot prawns are like velvety rich lobster bisque--dizzyingly delightful. And the flesh was popping crisp and sweet. The corn and 'taters were excellent foils for the bold taste of the seafood, the crabs were some of the best this year, and the sausage with spicy, and all of it was quenched down with draughts of crisp, tasty Chilean Sauvignon Blanc that I barrel fermented last year.

I think I might just make this one again.

Posted by Boilin' Tim AT 7:10PM

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