Crustacean Delights
While insects mostly provoke
irrational displays of disgust, their crustacean cousins are loved the world
over. From crab to shrimp to lobster,
they all offer a nutty and sweet taste that even fish haters approve. They
decay rather quickly, which means you can find them in stores in 3 forms:
already cooked, frozen, or, even better, alive.
Most of the year, only sparse
lobsters inhabit the fish tanks of California retail stores. But from November
to spring, they are crowded out by the local Dungeness crab, the darling of the
US West coast. As soon as the season starts, fans rush out to get the first
ones. In a place where everyone expects everything to be available all the
time, it is a rare case of natural seasonal frenzy.
If your guests are ready to work
with their fingers, this is the simplest way to appreciate Dungeness crab. One
crab is enough for two people. You should buy your crabs live, kicking and
pinching, and poach them yourself just before eating, for at least two reasons:
1) it will taste much better fresh and at room temperature and 2) you will have
contributed to the needed war against squeamishness.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil
with a sprig of rosemary or two bay leaves.
If your crabs are too lively for
you, you can put them in the freezer compartment for a few minutes in order to
numb them.
Place the crabs in the pot, always
thanking Mother Nature for her offerings in this sacred moment.
18 minutes later, extract the crab and
transfer it to a large flat dish to cool down. It will take only about 30
minutes to be at the right temperature for a feast.
Before serving, you can help your
guests by opening the crabs and pre-breaking the legs. To quickly achieve that
task, I use the back of a heavy knife or a simple hammer wrapped for hygiene in
a plastic bag. A few gentle blows on a chopping block work very well.
On the side, prepare a mayonnaise
(see the Egg section) seasoned with curry or tarragon, or both. You are now
ready for a delicious meal, involving usual banter among friends and exchanging
know-how on the best ways to extract meat from the strangest places. You can
also compare your guests’ characters: some will be eating as they go along and
others will be hoarding every bit until they have quite a mound before they
start eating. I hope there will be some mayonnaise left for them. They deserve
it.
Lobster offers a good example of the
vagaries of taste and ranking. It was once so abundant that it was considered
food for the poor and the destitute. In New England, eating it twice a week was
assimilated to harsh punishment. Then, with overfishing, it became more rare,
and therefore better (where is the logic?).
Now, it may be more easily available, and always a delicacy. We rarely
have it and therefore we do not need to worry about its propensity to
accumulate heavy metals and other pollutants, especially in its green liver
(tomalley), which proves to be at the same time the best and the worst.
Given the price, you may want to
attempt something more sophisticated than boiling. Most traditional recipes
call for cutting the lobster alive to make sure the flesh is as firm as
possible. However, this is easier said than done, especially if you have a
minimum of empathy. As crustaceans have no central nervous system, there is no
way to knock them out at the last minute. I would suggest anesthetizing the lobsters,
either through immersion in iced salt water for 20 minutes or a stay of 10
minutes in the freezer compartment.
Of course, if you use frozen lobster
or shrimp, this problem disappears (and so does most of the exquisite taste).
French people still argue about the
mysterious origins of this appellation, for a recipe which has itself largely
evolved in the last 150 years. Many recipes still mainly use the original
southern accents of tomato, garlic, and olive oil. I prefer a variation which
uses a rich butter sauce as an epitome of sophistication. The necessary
ingredients are:
×
2 live
lobsters (is one for two people enough?)
×
½ cup
cognac
×
2 minced
shallots
×
1 crushed
garlic clove
×
2 cups of
peeled, seeded chopped tomatoes
×
Bouquet garni (parsley, thyme, laurel)
×
½ bottle
dry white wine
×
1 pinch
cayenne
×
Salt and
pepper
×
4 oz.
butter (or cream depending on your final choice)
×
Tarragon
or chervil
Cut the lobster in several pieces,
and throw them in a pan with butter on medium/high heat. For a small lobster,
the easiest way might be to cut it in half lengthwise with a sharp heavy knife
or cleaver.
Salt and pepper.
After about 5 minutes, when the
shell’s color has turned to a bright red, pour the fat out of the pan.
Pour the cognac in and flambé it for
the fun until it has evaporated.
Throw in the shallots, garlic clove
and tomatoes, as well as the wine.
If you have small lobsters, they
should be cooked in 5 minutes. Take the lobster pieces out and transfer to a
heated plate.
Reduce the sauce in the pan to a
volume of 1 cup, add a pinch of cayenne and pour it through a sieve into a
small pan.
Meanwhile, take the lobster tails
out of their shell, and crack the claws to make the meat totally or partially
accessible to every guest.
It is now almost time to serve. This
is best done with individual heated plates for each guest.
In the small pan, you start heating
the reduction on medium heat. Then, always under the boiling point and mostly
away from the burner, incorporate butter little by little, admiring the way
your emulsion takes off.
Place lobster pieces in each plate.
Pour the sauce over them, and sprinkle with some chervil or tarragon. If you do
not serve alone, some steamed white rice would be the best accompaniment.
This recipe can be adapted in
numerous ways, e.g. tomato sauce instead of fresh tomatoes, cream instead of
butter, shrimps or crayfish instead of lobster. As shrimps are smaller, they
will be messier to eat and may require finger use. Plan on paper napkins and
lemon water bowls!
Shrimp tails are available
year-round, usually frozen and shipped from many parts of the world. The
“fresh” ones found in stores have been thawed and should be eaten quickly.
They could be steamed or boiled, but
only sautéing or stir-frying will extract the best out of them in terms of
color and taste. I have found that they taste better if cooked in their
shell: If the final dish implies to take the shell out, you can always do that
after a first sautéing episode.
Cook some spinach in butter (see
Vegetable section)
Sauté shrimps for 5 minutes in a pan
on high heat until shell becomes bright red. Transfer to a dish.
Sauté some minced onion, bell
peppers and ginger in the same pan.
Add white wine, a generous amount of
curry and start reducing the liquid.
Meanwhile, de-shell and remove the
digestive tract by incising the back of each shrimp’s tail
Finish the sauce by adding cream to
the reduction. Add the shrimp so that they warm up. Salt and pepper.
Serve over cooked spinach leaves on
individual plates.
This generic name refers to the
mollusks that spend their lives between two shells: mussels, oysters, clams,
scallops and the like. They resist supply chain vagaries rather well, which
means we can find them fresh and alive everywhere, in general on ice. In the
Bay Area Chinese markets, as in Sicily, clams are even sometimes kept in flat
tanks from which they squirt at you as you pass by.
Commercial crops are closely
monitored by health authorities so that all these can be eaten rather safely,
raw or cooked.
In France, oysters are mostly
associated with some form of winter festive meal. Some producing areas are
recognized to be the best and have cultivated new ways to make oysters fuller
and “spéciales” (that is their name).
At least one small producer has reached celebrity status, although you would
not find his photograph in people magazines yet.
The French mostly eat their oysters
raw, i.e. as natural as possible, and you can do that in the US too as they
travel rather well. You can also “cook” them in various ways, poached in their
shell in their own water or in white wine and cream for 2 or 3 minutes. My only
recommendation would be to season them very discreetly. Their subtle flavors
deserve not to be overpowered.
This very popular French (or is it
Belgian?) recipe is very close to the way clams are prepared for Spaghetti alle
vongole. You need:
×
3lbs
mussels
×
1 minced
onion
×
1 minced
shallot
×
1 cup of
dry white wine
×
4 tbsp.
minced parsley
×
1 sprig
of thyme (optional)
×
2 chopped
stalks of celery (optional)
×
4 tbsp.
butter
Select a pan large enough to contain
the future opened mussels, for example, an enameled Dutch oven.
Brown the onion and shallot in a bit
of butter until golden, without salting. Add the thyme and the celery.
Add the cleaned mussels and the
white wine. Cover and cook on medium heat for 4 or 5 minutes.
Turn off the heat. Discard the
mussels that have not opened. Transfer the cooking liquid to a separate pan.
Taste to make sure the liquid is not
too salty. Reduce slightly and whisk the butter in. Add parsley. Pepper to
taste.
Display the mussels as a mound on a
serving dish (with their shells) and pour the sauce over them. In Belgium or
the North of France, these would be traditionally served with fries and a glass
of beer.
Very seductive raw with their strong
iodine taste, these can also be cooked. After all, they are the vongole of the
spaghetti of the same name and, associated with flour, the basic material for
clam chowder. A simple way to prepare them would be to prepare an appetizer of
stuffed clams on their half-shell. Count 4 clams per person.
Pour your cleaned clams into a pot
with one cup of white wine and a bay leaf.
Cover and cook for 3 minutes on high
heat.
Take the clams out and set them
aside on a dish on their half-shell with some bread crumbs.
Reduce the liquid and add chives,
chervil, pepper and a dollop of butter, possibly a very small pinch of saffron,
mostly for color.
Distribute equally over the shells.
Serve and eat quickly.
If its only claim to glory was to
have carried Venus to the shore in Sandro Botticelli’s famous painting, this
shellfish would already deserve all of our admiration and gratitude. But it
does offer more, much more.
This is the meatiest of all
shellfish. In its original state, when you just open the shell, it offers the
scallop itself, some edible orange or beige colored roe, which can add visual
enchantment to a dish, and the “beard” which is mostly used indirectly (for
stock making for example). In the US, at least on the West coast, you mainly
find the scallops only, coming from the East coast and in general frozen and
processed with some additive you do not want to know about. (2)
Somehow, scallops are forgiving and
are still delicious despite this treatment. Their high price limits their
consumption and keeps them available. Fortunately, the meat’s richness makes a
small quantity per person feasible. All in all, not a bad deal!
This dish can be served as an
appetizer, or as a main dish with rice or spaghetti (or steamed potato slices).
What is wanted here is a creamy
sauce where shellfish tastes meet the unique flavor of saffron. The ingredients can be changed at will.
Asparagus is not compulsory but adds some crunchiness and a mild bitter flavor.
You will need:
×
¾ lb. of
scallops
×
½ lb. of
mussels
×
¼ lb. of
asparagus tips
×
½ cup of
dry white wine
×
1 or 1 ½
cup of crème fraiche (or heavy whipping cream if not available)
×
1 large
pinch of saffron
×
¼ tsp. of
turmeric
×
Butter,
salt and pepper
×
Fresh
herbs, lemon thyme or basel
Mussels. This can be done in advance. Pour the wine in
a pan, add the mussels and cover. Mussels should open in 4 minutes. Discard the
shells and reserve the content of the pan in a jar. The liquid is a blend of
wine and seawater. Check for salt content.
Asparagus. Cut some asparagus tips in ½ inch bits and sauté in a
large pan (that will ultimately receive the spaghetti if you use this
preparation as a topping ). Medium heat. Salt. Check that the butter
temperature remains low enough. This should take 4/5 minutes. Transfer to a
bowl.
Scallops. Add
butter in the pan and sauté the scallops. Set aside in a bowl.
Finishing.
Pour the mussels in the pan with
some of the liquid : all of the liquid if it is not too salty, just a little in
the opposite case. Remember that if you are combining with spaghetti, you need
to obtain a slightly over-salted sauce in the end.
Add the asparagus, the scallops, the
saffron, and the turmeric.
Add the
crème fraîche and bring to a boil for a few minutes so that the sauce thickens. Color should turn to a beautiful yellow.
Pepper to taste.
Mix the spaghetti in if they are
part of the feast.
As a child, I sometimes went to the
beach and fished for these, buried in the sand, their presence revealed by
bubbles in the undertow. My father had decided these were unfit for human
consumption because they were full of sand and too hard to chew.
Fortunately, I tried them out when I
reached adulthood, just laying them down in their shell in a pan on medium heat
until the shell opened up. It takes about 2 minutes. The meat is naturally
detached from the shell, tender and juicy. There may be a grain of sand or two
but what a delight! No seasoning is needed. If your fishmonger carries these
from time to time, try them! (3)
This cousin of the Atlantic razor
clam may be even better but also much bigger, which makes a certain form of
preparation necessary to make it visually acceptable to most people.
To clean them, open them first,
either by running a knife along the inside shells or popping them open with
boiling water poured over them for 4 or 5 seconds. You then open them up and
remove all the dark or translucent parts which belong to their digestive or
respiratory tract.
Cooking them in a pan with a bit of
oil or butter will take 2 minutes on high heat. Before or after cooking, you
can slice them diagonally for presentation and set aside in a warm bowl, ready
to be served.
You can use the same pan for making
a reduction of white wine with shallots, a bit of ginger or green garlic and
one tbsp. of lemon juice.
Transfer to a small pan through a
sieve and bring back to a boil.
Away from the burner, add butter
gradually and build your sauce.
Serve the clam pieces on small
plates with the sauce on top.
Sprinkle with minced chives or
Vietnamese coriander.
Squid belongs to the Cephalopod
family, which also includes cuttlefish and octopus, harder to spot in American
markets. (4)
Their intelligence has granted them
an entry in Wikipedia but most gourmets are more interested in the delights
they procure. They come in different sizes, allowing for great versatility.
They can be deep-fried, stir-fried, stewed, stuffed and roasted. They combine
well with tomato, pepper, garlic, parsley, cilantro and all Asian spices and
herbs. Small ones are naturally more tender.
Unfortunately, the most difficult part in the US, even close to the
coast, is to find very fresh ones, fished only the day before.
With small squids, you can prepare a
stuffing similar to the one for stuffed tomato (see Vegetable section), except
you replace the meat by chopped sautéed tentacles and possibly other fish. You
can also add some minced prosciutto. Close each opening with a thread or a
bamboo skewer. And cook in the oven on medium heat for 30-35 minutes.
Clean the squid throroughly.
Eliminate the guts, eyes and the sort of beak between the legs. Keep the meaty
parts: the body envelope and legs. Cut them up in manageable pieces. Select the
vegetables you want to sauté or stir-fry your squid with.
The fall back solution is to use
green pepper and onion, with some water added at the end if you need some form
of sauce.
After sautéing the squid alone for 5
minutes, transfer it to a side plate.
Sauté a green pepper, 1 jalapeño, 1 onion,
2 tomatoes cut in fourths for 30 minutes. A little curry would be fine.
Put the squid back in. Add chopped
cilantro and a diced raw avocado. Salt and pepper.
Serve. It’s called “return to life,”
but it is to die for. This hot stew could also be made with shrimp, or both
squid and shrimp.
All cephalopods have an ink sac. They squirt that ink
around them to fool their predators and get away. The ink sac of cuttlefish is
either bigger or better preserved during handling, which has made it a primary
source of sepia ink in the past. Its use today is mainly culinary as it
provides a rich, complex and subtle flavor, object of a true
cult in places as diverse as Italy, Spain, or Okinawa. Unfortunately, it is
rarely found in American fish markets.
Discovering this particular “inky” taste was one of
the most dazzling experiences I ever had in my lifelong exploration of the
world’s flavors. As it never became part of France’s culture, I could only
taste it in Spanish or Italian restaurants. Moving to the south of France, I
discovered with elation that these mollusks were fished locally and readily
available in the best fish shops. I have been splurging ever since. Cuttlefish
is mostly associated with rice or pasta.
One superiority of pasta over rice is that it will not absorb all the ink,
which will allow you to sample with a spoon.
Cuttlefish may come in different sizes:
Always prefer the tender ones, well under one pound in weight.
You may have to clean them yourself if you
want to preserve the ink sac. This requires some sense of anatomy and a good
dose of care.
The ink sac is a silvery pouch located
against the flesh inside the mantle. To find it, take away the cuttlebone and
open the mantle. Locate the ink sac and the duct which comes out of it. Set
them aside. Discard the innards, the eyes and the beak located between the
arms. Peel the mantle. The edible parts are the mantle, the head and the arms. Clean them
thoroughly. Cut them into bite size pieces.
Sauté them on high heat for 5 minutes and set them
aside.
Sauté bell peppers and onions in the same pan.
Add the cuttlefish pieces and cook for 5 to 10 more
minutes.
Raw ripe diced tomato can be added.
Press the reserved ink sac to express the ink through
the duct (easier said than done, it requires some practice… and ideally
surgeon’s gloves to preserve the beauty of your fingernails)
Add a generous pinch of saffron.
Cook for 5 more minutes.
Fold some steaming pasta into the pan.
Salt and pepper to taste. You can also add
some chopped parsley for visual effect.
The pasta has now acquired a beautiful, gleaming dark
grey/brown color in no time and will be greeted with enthusiasm by cognoscenti.
It may also inspire revulsion in all the people who care about white teeth. Try
to convince them gently: this experience may change their life.
Provide paper napkins and eat with special care.
(1)
You can also use any leaf that will taste
good barely cooked, watercress for example.
(2)
This is your best bet. It can also come from much
farther away, and for a better price.
(3)
Remove the dark parts if they look
unappetizing to you.
(4)
However, you can find octopus as “tako” in
shops that cater to Japanese cooks. Apparently, right sized specimens are
sourced in various parts of the world, frozen, shipped to Japan where they are
cooked, frozen, and shipped out again. And, by miracle, their taste is still rather
good!
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