12 small crabs*
olive oil for sauteing
6-8 cloves of garlic
a splash of red wine
Tomato sauce made with: 3 big and 2 little tomatoes, a little sugar, fresh basil to taste, and 2 bay leaves
Clean the crabs and saute them with the garlic in a little olive oil. Add in the rest of the ingredients and cook until done.**
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*This reminds me of the time Grandmom and I decided to eat crabs since I was up there and Grandmom therefore had justification for buying them. We both love seafood. Grandpop does not. Or rather, he didn't before their marriage, went through a 20-year period where he did like it after being tricked into eating it, much the same way he learned to appreciate rabbit, and then in recent years has returned to his original seafood-hating state. So we went to the grocery store to purchase some crabs, which in New Jersey is not a difficult thing to do. But lo and behold! That day, there were no large, luscious Alaskan crab legs or Snow crab legs for us to take home and boil up with a hint of Old Bay and dunk in hot melted butter. No. The only crabs to be gotten in the midst of the summer were little blue crabs. So we bought them, and took them home, and made this sauce with them, which we ate on top of linguine. The funny part is that you have to understand that when this recipe says "clean the crabs" it doesn't mean "take all the meat out of the shells"-- it just means "run them bad boys under some water so you don't eat sand and crab poop." So the crabs should be, and were, in shell. Hard shells. And they were little crabs. So, we started out with a serving platter piled high, I mean high, with tiny cooked crabs, and we, seafood lovers that we are, and stubborn people that we are, commenced to eating them. When we conceded that we were done, two and a half hours later, we had made it about 3/4ths of the way down, sucking every tiny claw to its very core along the way. Grandpop had left the table after finishing his non-seafood alternative about a half-hour into the crab festival muttering something about how we were eating too much. But, as anybody who has ever tried to eat a tiny crab can tell you, there ain't a lot of meat in them tiny crabs. I think we got more calories from the linguine. But it was a delicious and messy experience and, honestly, that's what eating crabs should be.
**"Until done." Possibly the two most obscure words in the English language. It assumes so much of the recipe reader, like that they know what done is, what it looks like, and about how long it takes to get there. In this case, you should have a nice saucy tomato sauce (not cooked salsa), and your crabs should be safe to consume without fear of horrible digestive consequences. So at least 30 minutes on medium-low (think "simmer"). Maybe an hour. An added benefit to making this sauce is that you have deliciously crabby red sauce left long after you finish off your tiny crabs, which you can soak into good Italian bread (the sauce, not the tiny crabs) or coat more luxurious pasta with. A good pasta sauce should go a long way.
olive oil for sauteing
6-8 cloves of garlic
a splash of red wine
Tomato sauce made with: 3 big and 2 little tomatoes, a little sugar, fresh basil to taste, and 2 bay leaves
Clean the crabs and saute them with the garlic in a little olive oil. Add in the rest of the ingredients and cook until done.**
_______
*This reminds me of the time Grandmom and I decided to eat crabs since I was up there and Grandmom therefore had justification for buying them. We both love seafood. Grandpop does not. Or rather, he didn't before their marriage, went through a 20-year period where he did like it after being tricked into eating it, much the same way he learned to appreciate rabbit, and then in recent years has returned to his original seafood-hating state. So we went to the grocery store to purchase some crabs, which in New Jersey is not a difficult thing to do. But lo and behold! That day, there were no large, luscious Alaskan crab legs or Snow crab legs for us to take home and boil up with a hint of Old Bay and dunk in hot melted butter. No. The only crabs to be gotten in the midst of the summer were little blue crabs. So we bought them, and took them home, and made this sauce with them, which we ate on top of linguine. The funny part is that you have to understand that when this recipe says "clean the crabs" it doesn't mean "take all the meat out of the shells"-- it just means "run them bad boys under some water so you don't eat sand and crab poop." So the crabs should be, and were, in shell. Hard shells. And they were little crabs. So, we started out with a serving platter piled high, I mean high, with tiny cooked crabs, and we, seafood lovers that we are, and stubborn people that we are, commenced to eating them. When we conceded that we were done, two and a half hours later, we had made it about 3/4ths of the way down, sucking every tiny claw to its very core along the way. Grandpop had left the table after finishing his non-seafood alternative about a half-hour into the crab festival muttering something about how we were eating too much. But, as anybody who has ever tried to eat a tiny crab can tell you, there ain't a lot of meat in them tiny crabs. I think we got more calories from the linguine. But it was a delicious and messy experience and, honestly, that's what eating crabs should be.
**"Until done." Possibly the two most obscure words in the English language. It assumes so much of the recipe reader, like that they know what done is, what it looks like, and about how long it takes to get there. In this case, you should have a nice saucy tomato sauce (not cooked salsa), and your crabs should be safe to consume without fear of horrible digestive consequences. So at least 30 minutes on medium-low (think "simmer"). Maybe an hour. An added benefit to making this sauce is that you have deliciously crabby red sauce left long after you finish off your tiny crabs, which you can soak into good Italian bread (the sauce, not the tiny crabs) or coat more luxurious pasta with. A good pasta sauce should go a long way.
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