Soft Shell Crab Sandwich

I am a sucker for a season change. In the fall, a tinge of color on a leaf sends me straight for the pumpkin recipes. In the winter, the first hint of a flurry has been buying the largest hunk of meat I can roast. But spring, spring is intoxicating. It is a test of patience and wills, staring at farmers market tables where an early spat of warm days or a sudden cold snap can alter by weeks the arrival of food you want so badly. You spend your time willing asparagus to show, or being disappointed by the lack of strawberries (as our heroine was last week, desperately wanting to make strawberry ice cream).

But it was not at the farmer's market, this past week, that I knew it was really spring. It was in the fish shop. They're here! They're really here! Finally, after waiting and wishing and hoping, there in perfect little rows were the soft shell crabs. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, when I made the Crab and Asparagus Tart, I'm a little crustacean crazy, by way of a generational tendency to crave them. When I was a kid and the Little Mermaid was my favorite movie, I didn't really understand why the Le Poisson song was supposed to be so shocking. Of course he'd want to cook the crab. They're delicious.  Sorry Sebastian. Now shut up and get in the pot.

Soft shells, on the East Coast at least, are blue crabs in their molting phase. They molt their shells, and then can only be eaten as a soft shell for about four days before it grows back. During this time you can cook and eat them, shells and all. This is not to say you can eat the whole thing. Soft shell crabs do need to be "cleaned". And by cleaned I mean you have to cut it's face off. And rip out its lungs. While it's still alive. Here, let the chef from the Mermaid Inn show you how it's done. I'm certainly not going to. I make the fish monger do it.

Yeah, if you have a really nice fish salesman, you can make him do it. The crab then needs to be cooked the second you get home. If you want to store it in the fridge and cook it later, then you better buy them live and get ready to snip its face off.

Once the faces are off the little buggers, they are actually really easy to cook. You can batter and fry them, or bread and saute, I go with a milk soak, a seasoned fouring, and then sauteing in garlic, olive oil, and butter. Completely unhealthy, completely fantastic. The legs get all crispy and crunchy. The insides burst with flavor. And the best way to eat them, in my opinion, is to stick them on a really good roll, toasted, with mayo. Mmmmm.

Soft Shell Crab Sandwiches

Ingredients:

-4 Soft Shell Crabs

-1/2 Cups Milk

-3/4 Cup All Purpose Flour

-1 tsp Old Bay

-Salt and Pepper to Taste

-2 Tbs olive oil

-2Tbs Unsalted Butter

-2 Tbs Chopped Flat Leaf Parsley

-4 High Quality Rolls, cut and toasted

Directions:

Place crabs in shallow container in a single layer. Cover with milk. Let soak refrigerated for 1 hour. Drain and discard milk. Whisk together flour, salt, pepper, and Old Bay. Lightly dredge each crab in the mixture.

Heat the oil and butter together in skillet over medium high heat and saute the crabs until golden, about 4 minutes per side. Do not crowd the crabs, cook in batches if necessary, adding more oil and butter to the pan between batches.

Place one crab on each roll. Sprinkle chopped parsley on top. Add mayo if desired.

My one regret is that we had no lemon in the house. I think a squirt of fresh lemon juice on top of the crab would have been tasty. It has been enough to hold me over until the grown up crabs come in. You can't eat those shells. Therefore you just have to rip the crabs apart. Poor Sebastian.

Crab and Asparagus Tart

The tarts were following me. In cookbooks, on blogs, in restaurants, I kept coming tart after tarts, some sweet, some savory, all looking insanely good to eat. I've had difficulty with pie crust in the past, however, (edible but not pretty) and tart crusts seemed too similar. Also it was baking, and I'm not a huge fan of baking. Finally though, the New York Times broke me down. I was minding my own business, sitting on the subway, happily reading an article about 2008 Kabinett Rieslings and how good they were in spring. Then I came across their suggestion for pairing. It was a recipe for a Crab and Asparagus Tart. I ran out and bought a tart pan.

I had to! This tart had in it just about everything I had been craving of late. Spring means asparagus, even if I had to shamefully buy it from California, it included goat cheese, which I already had in my fridge. And it had crab.

My family, for generations now, has been insane about blue crabs. Entire summer picnics have been designed around only the idea of a cooler full of crabs and a case of beer. On summer vacations we pulled them out of the bay, the scrawny little New Jersey crabs. A bar right on the water in Maryland has seen our faces several times, and when that bar was the subject of a feature article in the Times last fall, extolling the virtues of sitting on the deck picking apart crabs, I leaped off the subway at the next stop to call my mom, standing on a street corner in Manhattan as I tried to guide her to the right part of the website. "No Mom, you have to click on Travel. No not Styles, Travel. How did you end up in International? Look at the bar and click Travel!" No wonder visitors to the city think we're all crazy. In any case, it had been far too long since I'd eaten crab meat. I've been prowling the fish shops, waiting for soft shells to appear, but that's another month off. I didn't care if I wasn't going to be able to pick the meat myself, I wanted to eat it. I wanted to eat it with spring veggies and cheese. I had to make this tart.

It actually went pretty well! the nice thing about tart crusts is you don't have to pinch the crust all pretty like you do a pie. Once you have it laid in there, you can just roll your rolling pin over the top, and Ta Da! Perfectly trimmed pretty crust. I made only one significant change from the Times recipe. They call for 1 tablespoon chervil, essentially a fancy parsley. On the day I was doing my shopping I couldn't find it. I considered throwing in some regular parsley I had in my fridge, but I really wasn't feeling the bitter herbs with my nice, fresh, spring tart. I considered my ingredients, and decided fresh dill was what I really wanted to add to the flavor. Dill is so perfect for seafood, as well as for mixing with goat cheese, mild and soft in flavor but bringing a fresh dimension to an otherwise somewhat heavy dish.

Crab and Asparagus Tart

Adapted from the New York Times

Ingredients:

-1 and 1/4 cup flour (156.25 grams, I have learned from my new digital scale)

-1/2 teaspoon cayenne

-7 tablespoons unsalted butter

-4 large eggs

-1 Tablespoon minced shallot

-1/2 bunch medium asparagus, ends snapped, halved vertically and cut into 1 inch pieces

-8 oz lump crab meat

-1 Tablespoon lemon juice

-1 Tablespoon chopped dill

-3/4 cup half-and-half

-4 oz soft goat cheese

Directions:

Heat oven to 400 degrees. In a food processor, blend four, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and cayenne. Add 6 tablespoons cold butter and pulse until size of peas. In a separate bowl, beat 1 egg with 2 tablespoons of ice water. Scatter on flour mixture and pulse until a dough can be gathered together. Add a little more ice water if needed. Form into a disk and roll on a lightly floured surface until about 1/4 inch thick. Loosely roll your dough onto your rolling pin, then unroll it gently into a 9 inch tart pan.

Form dough to side of pan, then roll your rolling pin over to trim the edges. Line with foil and weight with pastry weights (or if you are like me and don't own those, pennies). Bake 10 minutes. Remove foil and weights and bake until it begins to look lightly browned, 5-10 minutes. Remove from oven. Reduce heat to 350 degrees.

Melt remaining tablespoon of butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add shallot and cook 1 minute. Add asparagus and cook about 2 minutes, until they start to soften. Remove from heat. Fold in crab meat, lemon juice, and dill. Season with salt to taste. Spread mixture into pastry shell.

Whisk half-and-half and goat cheese until smooth. Beat in the remaining 3 eggs until well blended. Pour over crab mixture. (You may have a little too much, I did. I just poured until it looked like it was going to breach the pastry wall, then stopped.) Place in oven and bake about 40 minutes, until set and lightly browned. Let cool 15 minutes, remove the sides of the pan and serve at once or cooled to room temperature.

I was pleased with how this turned out. It was excellent the day of and I think even better for lunch the next day, so it could definitely be made the night before if you planned on serving it for brunch.

The cayenne added a little heat, more of a mouth feel then a spicy flavor. It was the perfect thing because we paired it with the crisp white wine that had been recommend, but if you were doing this for a brunch, I might leave it out. Next time I might trim back the asparagus and the crab a little bit and throw in some sliced mushrooms with the shallots. The article even recommends replacing the asparagus with diced zucchini later in the summer. The recipe is open to a lot of adaptable options, so you can make it your own. Now that I own my own tart pan, the possibilities are endless.

Crab Cake Sandwiches

I could never live outside of a temperate zone. I adore each season with passion when it arrives, and despise it from the depths of my soul by the time it departs. By the end of winter I'm so desperate to pack away the sweaters and put on a flowing skirt that I have been known to just wear them in March in an attempt to change the seasons by sheer force of wardrobe. It hasn't worked, and has resulted in some cold ankles. For the record, I've also tried doing ritualistic tribal dances, selling my soul to Satan, and--in a fit of desperation--frowning at clouds until they go away. I'm usually completely done with summer by early August. It's hot, it's humid, and this past summer it was usually raining. About five minutes into September I was eying my fall outfits and dreaming of apple cider, pumpkin muffins, and lovely fall roasts. Unfortunately it was still 85 degrees outside.

The past few weeks have seen the thermometer bounce up and down, and as I eyed the forecast for the perfect day to bust out my cute brown knee high boots, I became vaguely aware then when we hit 80 degrees on Tuesday it would probably be the last warm day of 2009. Flowing skirt on, I went to Chelsea Market, an indoor gourmet food plaza on 16th Street and 9th Ave to hunt down the ingredients for one last summery dish. It's a Mecca of wonderful (if occasionally overpriced) ingredients, and it has a huge customer as an upstairs neighbor, namely, the Food Network.

One thing I'm not thrilled with in NY is the lack of fish places that will sell you a hard shell crab. You can find the soft ones in the late spring and early summer, but an honest to god hard shelled blue crab eludes me. I bet it could be found in Chinatown, but I've still got enough suburbanite in me to be a little wary of the fish in Chinatown. Most of my non Tilapia or Catfish seafood comes from the Lobster Place. I've gotten decent prices there, depending on what I've been shopping for, and during the lobster glut last year they were one of the most affordable. While full crabs eluded me I found some excellent hand picked crab meat and I knew what my summer send off would be. If I couldn't indulge in the carnal tradition that is ripping a crab apart with my bare hands, I would go the more classy and upscale route, crab cakes. As I exited the Lobster Place I saw Amy's Bread, and my idea developed further, a few really nice rolls and I would have crab cake sandwiches. Wandering further down the market I spotted Chelsea Wine Vault, and what's a good seafood dinner without a chilled white? My mother might disown me...and I like having a mother. A proper meal now planned, I headed home.

My recipe is adapted from one I found in an issue of Gourmet from last summer, brilliant in its simplicity and phenomenally quick to throw together. My deviations from the original recipe are as follows. The recipe originally called for only 2 tbs of beaten egg, but following the advice of the commenters on the website I modified it to include a whole egg. I always keep a loaf of Whole Foods' Organic Italian Bread in my refrigerator. In NY it's a steal at $2.50 and I slice it up all week long for toast, sandwiches, and bread alongside meals. It keeps beautifully; it's one of my kitchen staples. This was more then up to the task of filling in the cakes, as long as I removed the harder top crust. A confession, the recipe calls for Jumbo Lump Crabmeat, which I have left in as it probably is best, but it was nearly $15 to the regular Lump Crabmeat's $9. To be honest, it worked just fine. Just as I was about to throw the patties in the pan, I remembered the several packets of Old Bay I took home from a work conference in Baltimore, just sitting in my cabinet waiting for some use. A little sprinkle brought some heat to the meal, and made it more reminiscent of the full crab dinner I had initially dreamed of.

Crab Cake Sandwiches

Ingredients:
2 slices firm white sandwich bread
1/2 pound jumbo lump crabmeat, picked over
2 tablespoon mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 large egg, beaten
2 tablespoon unsalted butter
Old Bay to taste
2 Sandwich rolls
Accompaniment:
Lemon wedges

Directions:
Tear bread into small pieces into a bowl with crab. Add mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, egg, and a pinch of salt. Mix together gently but thoroughly, then form into 2 patties. If you like, sprinkle patties with Old Bay.
Heat butter in a 12-inch heavy skillet over medium heat until foam subsides, then cook crab cakes, turning once, until golden brown, about 8 minutes total.
Toast rolls, place crab cakes on, enjoy with a glass of wine!

See? Easy as pie! (Note: Pie is much more difficult than this colloquialism would have you believe. I've yet to successfully pull off a homemade pie crust.) Will, a hardliner in the fight against mayo, ate his with enthusiasm and then declared that he would like to eat about eight more. That's when I felt the need to build a napkin fort around what was left of my own sandwich. He was right though, the 2 tbs do work well in the cakes, but don't leave it tasting like a mayo burger as some crab cake recipes have been known to do. It was a great way to send off a season, that, if I had it my way, would be spent largely sitting on docks and eating seafood. Now that I'm looking at a forecast full of weather in the 60's and 70's, maybe a pork roast with apples… or mushroom soup… or a pumpkin pie. Maybe I'll even make the crust myself.