Let the Crabbing Begin

Over the years I’ve watched my fair share of the hit show, “The Deadliest Catch,” yet despite the hours I’ve logged in front of the tube, I still can’t call myself a fan. On some level, I have reservations about whether my time watching the show is well spent. The camera work is purely functional; the narration, mildly informative at best. And as I watch the crabbers on the boat being interviewed, I wonder if they actually like to eat the crab that they catch: if so, why is it that the taste of the meat - its texture, its innate brininess - is never mentioned?

Still, season after season, I find myself getting pulled into the series. To make sure that I don’t fall into the deepest depths of culinary depression when I’m watching, I usually tune into the show over my own meal of steamed crabs. Served with my beloved duck fat fries and a cool beer, they may not be Alaskan King Crab, but I tend to prefer the complex sweetness of a Blue Shell or the meaty, slightly toasted taste of a Dungeness anyway.

I start with the legs and claws, pulling out each sliver of sweet meat by the adjacent joint; if the meat doesn’t come willingly, I crack the shell with my molars and quickly retrieve it with my fingers. I use my thumb to jar away the triangular section of the carapace that attaches the body to the shell. Then, there’s the all-important crack, when I pull apart the two halves of the crab to reveal the bounteous flesh.

No matter how many crabs I eat, I’m always excited during this moment: if it’s a female crab, I want to know how much roe I’ll find inside and if it’s a male, will there be a gooey section of white lodged within? The shell may not contain flesh, but it is a bowl for the briny, fragrant broth of the crab that’s been trapped inside during steaming, and I’ll sip it like ambrosia. The body itself is beautiful. Though it is more noticeable in a Dungeness, even within a Blue Shell there are orderly compartments, each containing a section of juicy, firm meat that’s easily removable with a bit of dexterity.

I watch with wide eyes as the crabbers on The Deadliest Catch haul in their treasures. When the pots are full and hundreds of crabs tumble into the deck of the boat, my hand is mid-way between the table and my mouth, hanging open with greedy awe. What must it be like to sit on top of a mountain of crab? Painful, probably, but also deeply, deeply titillating.

As I watch the crabs flailing about in their holding station, in my heart there emerges the deepest desire to replicate what those men do in Alaska. And in my mind, I am a master crabber, wielder of gargantuan metal cages, and master of rain and waves. When the ship rocks and the cages are swinging like two-ton battle-axes, my svelte yet muscle-rippling body strains and twists to safely bring the pots on boards.

Usually, my reverie is over when the show ends and the dining table is covered with piles of discarded crab shells. But this summer, my crabbing dreams are just one step closer to reality. I live, literally, two blocks from the ocean. It’s not often that I get to say that, but it happens to be true for now. The view on the third floor of our apartment, where I do most of my writing, affords me a glimpse of the ocean. Somehow, just knowing that I'm so close to a body of water is comforting, especially for a girl who grew up in New Mexico.


So as soon as I got settled, I picked up the crab nets, I bought the bait, and finally, last week, I got crab! A handful of the liveliest rock crabs I’ve ever seen, right off the bay in Port Jefferson, Long Island.


And every week, I’ll be writing a feature for Serious Eats that I like to call The Crab Pot, geared towards all those hobbyist crabbers out there, with dreams of catching their own delicious crustaceans. Stay tuned.

An Auspicious Beginning

Not one day into my journey in New York, and I was already won over by the fantastic food to be found in the city. During the first night I stayed with friends in Forest Hills, Queens, where a thriving, predominately Jewish population supports an abundance of grocery stores and restaurants in the area. For dinner we dined at a kosher restaurant on 108th Street, which was lined with competing kosher establishments.

Sitting down to the table, I knew that what we were about to eat would be delicious because the menu offered, among other delicacies, skewers of lamb ribs. Underappreciated and generally unavailable, lamb ribs are one of my favorite cuts – fatty around the bone with a tasty sinew to chomp on, ribs can be much more flavorful than a chop for a fraction of the price. The ribs came perfectly charred on some very hot skewers and while I could not detect any marked signs of brining, the meat was inordinately juicy, suggesting that some marinating may been carried out in preparation.

For the weary traveler, nothing was more welcoming than a bowl of the restaurant’s dumpling soup, which resembled the Chinese version in its use of wrappers. The filling however, was decidedly Western – a mixture of ground pork and beef, and no vegetables in sight. Smaller than Chinese wontons, the dumplings floated about in a delicately flavored meat broth, fragrant with dill.

The next morning, I discovered the greatness that is the New York bagel. I’d never eaten a bagel with such a crispy crust, covered with a smattering of tiny, round bubbles resembling the gnarly skins of lizards. The bagels had been baked to a dark golden hue, yet the interior remained soft and chewy. The cream cheese fillings were whipped to a light and airy texture; when I bit down, there was perfect harmony between bread and spread.

That evening we chose a different kosher restaurant for dinner. My fellow diners pronounced the roasted carp dish to be too fishy, but I appreciated the crisped, crackly skin and the tender flesh. The collective favorite of the night was the Lula kebab, a skewer of ground beef and lamb that was perfectly juicy and well seasoned. Like the Iranian Kubideh kebab, the Lula is a difficult kebab to shape: over-handling results in a tough product, yet the ground meat must be carefully shaped around the skewer so that its shape will be retained during grilling.

To my greatest delight, the restaurant served skewered, grilled sweetbreads (written as Veal Khorovak on the menu, for those who are also on a constant lookout for sweetbreads). More accurately called the thymus glands, sweetbreads rank very highly in my list of all-time favorite offal, because the glands are creamy yet firm, with a taste I’ve yet to see replicated in other cuts of meat or offal.

As we strolled down 108th that evening, the street seemed alive with the sounds and smells of New York. Groups of men hung around storefronts, chatting amiably with one another and heckling friends as they walked by. Markets were still in full swing; inside, we passed dozens of different bins selling pickled fish and vegetables. There was a sense of community and a genuine feel of everyday life in these streets, which made the glitzy, modern cities in Southern California seem unanchored by comparison. Such was the overwhelming feeling that night, that I had arrived upon a sprawling leviathan of a city and that my life here would be replete with culinary adventures, strange and wondrous.

The Road to New Mexico

We arrived in New York by way of New Mexico, which is a strange way to get to the Big Apple – unless, of course, one’s parents happen to be employed in the Los Alamos National Laboratory, based in the northern part of the state. Chances are that in Los Alamos, everyone’s parents just happen to work for the lab, because the town was built in the 1940s for the express purpose of designing the bombs that would obliterate Hiroshima and Nagasaki; since then, the town has become a center for most other branches of scientific research as well.

Ever read about the Manhattan Project, or heard of Robert Oppenheimer? Yes, this was the birthplace of the atomic bomb: a formative stage, to say the least, in our concept of national security. And if one were to stop and think about the type of place that would support top-secret research and possess the capacity to host nuclear testing sites (where scientists could conduct actual atomic explosions, undulating like giant specters of mushrooms in the sky), then one begins to understand the immense scale of isolation in New Mexico.

It is an austere land, a hallowed ground where the Anasazi once carved sprawling adobe settlements by the foot of canyons and eventually, into the great underbellies of cliffs. Northern New Mexico is a place of clear, azure skies and vast canyons and plateaus seemingly endless in their reach across the terrain. The dirt is sanguine and earthy like no other; the billowy sandstone formations are more ancient than those the Grand Canyon.


Walking beside those formations is a humbling experience, a reminder of our relatively short time on this planet and a glimpse into what the world must have been like before the impact of modern civilization. As we walked along the dirt paths with our dear friend and high school teacher, Noel Trujillo, we picked up stones beneath our feet. The area is a veritable treasure trove for anyone interested in geology. Once under water, the ground is now covered with radiant pebbles washed smooth by the passage of water. The hike was a rambling and pleasant walk through the shallow valleys of the areas. Sam, a trusty Labrador, lead the way, taking occasional trips to chase rabbits (phantom and otherwise).


He is affectionately and simply called Trujillo, and he lives with his family in a house he built with his own two hands, on a small farm that he runs, in the tiny town of Chimayó in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Trujillo is one of my favorite people in the world, a real salt-of-the-earth type who tells it like it is. He and his wife were kind enough to give us a tour of the area, which is rife in old and weathered churches still considered sites for miraculous healings.


For lunch we stopped by a local joint to feast upon some local Northern New Mexico specialities: tamales made with tender meat, seasoned with spices not unlike Korean chili powder; enchiladas covered with a melted cheese that mysteriously remains soft and yielding even when it is cold; and sopaipillas, the local version of fried dough with a crispy exterior and a soft, chewy interior. I have an incredible weakness for sopaipillas, which are served with generous dollops of honey and apricot preserves.

For me, the time spent on Trujillo’s farm was the highlight of our visit. During autumn the apple trees bear their fruit in abundance, providing enough to last through the winter. Sweet with a deep flavor, these apples are better than the best I’ve tried in farmer’s markets. When we visited in mid June, the mulberry trees were in full swing, yielding tiny amethyst jewels bursting with juice. Growing in a raised bed near the trees, the strawberries were small but sweet, tasting and smelling like what strawberries were meant to be. As we walked around the grounds, Trujillo pointed out the various wild asparagus plants shooting forth from the ground. Resembling shrubs, the plants bore round seeds on the branches, which will eventually fall to the ground and grown into asparagus shoots.

Ever the handyman, Trujillo built for his mother-in-law an authentic New Mexican oven, placed outdoors for the purpose of roasting corn. The corn, which becomes wholly dried in the process, can be rehydrated in the months to come for use in soups and stews.



Finally and most delightfully, there were the chickens. Oh, the chickens! The most beautiful birds I’ve ever seen, roaming happily around the farm, foraging for food and lazing about in the sun. The most gorgeous of them all was this particular hen, a Rhode Island Red with a proud, golden plumage.


The farm is decidedly run by one ornery rooster, an indomitable creature that doesn’t know his own size. With his fat and muscular thighs, he has been known to punt (rather painfully, we were told) the ankles of any potential human provoker. Strutting around the hen house, the rooster takes especial pleasure in taunting Trujillo’s flock of pet turkeys, which are kept in a separate pen adjacent to the hen house.

Were the chickens for eating, I asked with a glimmer of hope in my voice, or just for laying eggs? The latter, Trujillo replied firmly with a grin on his face, indicating that the subject was not open to debate. I was assuaged by the knowledge that the eggs from their hens were extremely tasty, with the firmness and integrity that can only come from properly raised, truly free-range birds. While I’ve never had the pleasure of an omelet a la Trujillo, I suspect that there will be some in my future. Inside the house, we were given bags of freshly caught trout, the spoils of his frequent fishing trips in the rivers and lakes nearby.

It is always hard to say goodbye to Trujillo, and to the farm. The people and the land, at once stark yet bountiful, stay close to our hearts wherever we may wander. For the vagabond gourmand, loyalties are formed with suspicion. Food that may be enticing in one locale, during one period over time, is never guaranteed to stay that way forever. Still, over the years I’ve come to call New Mexico home, not only for its culinary rewards, but also for the people in my life with whom I partake in all things beautiful and delicious.

San Marzano Tomato Sauce

It only took one encounter with a can of San Marzanos to convince me that up until that point I had never really tasted tomato sauce. San Marzanos were the sweetest, meatiest canned tomatoes I’d seen, so plump and perfectly firm with very little water in the flesh and practically no seeds in sight. In the past I’d sweated onions and carrots in olive oil as a base for tomato sauce, but these San Marzanos were so perfectly sweet and flavorful that I couldn’t bear to embellish them. Instead I turned to the simplest recipe for tomato sauce that I know, which requires nothing more than butter and a whole onion.

Stewed in an open pot with the onion chopped simply in half, the tomatoes will soften over a vigorous simmer. Using a wooden spoon to slowly squeeze the juice from the tomatoes is one of my greatest pleasures in the kitchen. The flesh of these plum tomatoes, which yields nicely to being pushed against the pot, is made richer by the addition of butter.

Sauce made from San Marzanos is good enough to eat on its own, and the tomatoes themselves are delicious eaten raw right off the vine. In the fall I nurtured four tiny little seedlings from the packet and by late May, the plants had overtaken our garden beds, surpassing my 5’3’’ stature by a good foot or so. The vines were laden with San Marzanos, aptly named the sausage tomato due to their elongated shape.


Tomato Sauce with Butter and Onion, adapted from Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

one 28-oz. can of whole San Marzano tomatoes
5 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1 medium onion, peeled and cut in half

Place the tomatoes and their juices, the butter, and the onion halves in a medium pan.

Bring to a simmer and cook uncovered for approximately 45 minutes.

Crush any large chunks of tomato with the back of a wooden spoon. The sauce is ready when the tomatoes have broken down, with only a few small pieces visible.

Remove the onion from the sauce. If you have used a very good quality onion, then it may be served on the side, tapas style.

Tagliatelle for a Spell

This month’s National Spelling Bee was the most fun I’ve had watching television all year. Weeks later, I’m still thinking about the palpable sense of tension, joy, and loss on that stage. What a spectacle it was to watch these extraordinary students, whose intelligence and composure belied their youth until the inevitable sound of the buzzer. And maybe it was just me, since ninety-five percent of my thoughts are occupied with what I’ve eaten or will eat, but I really think that an inordinately high number of food-related words appeared in this year’s competition.

There were two cheese words, “Neufchatel” and “Caerphilly,” of which only the former was familiar to me. I’m constantly using Neufchatel in my various experiments with cheese pastries, but I’ve never tried Caerphilly. (I’ve since learned that it is a hard and salty cheese that originates from a village of the same name in Wales).

Another word that came up was “Ilipsoas,” an anatomical term referring to a group of muscles comprised of, among others, the psoas major muscle. In cows, the psoas major is the tenderloin, and it was only after the moderator alluded to the word’s bovine connection that my interested was piqued. The next time I’m at the butcher’s, perhaps I will impress and dazzle with this tasty term.

Desserts were well represented with the words “Blancmange” and “Palatshinke.” Panna cotta, which is similar to the former, is my favored choice for cream desserts thickened with gelatin, yet I’d never heard of the latter word. Now I know that Palatschinke is the term for a thin, crepe-like, Central European pancake commonly filled with both sweet and savory goods.

I was so impressed by the depth and pageantry of the event that a few days later I tracked down the book American Bee, an enjoyable read about the history of the spelling bee and the nature of the English language. In the book I followed the twisted roots of the English language, first from Germanic and French influences and later, from Latin and Greek. The pessimist in me was delighted to learn that even with the advent of the printing press, spelling still remained in flux because Dutch print makers were paid by the line and thus added unnecessary letters to words to suit their own financial gain.

I had always suspected, but never fully understood, that early speakers of the English language were haphazardly welcoming of foreign lingo (like croissant, omelette, or champagne), embracing new vocabulary wholeheartedly without feeling the need to Anglicize them as the French still continue to do with their own adopted words. And logically so, words like “gnaw” or “knight,” were originally enunciated with their silent consonants in Middle English; such conventions were lost only centuries later from a shameless laziness in pronunciation.

Did you know that the spelling bee is a uniquely American tradition? Some languages, like German, are phonetically logical, yet there are plenty of others like French, which don’t always look as they sound. Leave it to the puritanical Americans to find entertainment in the form of spelling.

Needless to say, I am eagerly awaiting next year’s national spelling bee. For this year, the most memorable word of the night for me was “tagliatelle.” When I heard the word being given I leaped out of my chair to check on my supply of salt cod, because one of my favorite tagliatelle recipes comes from Mario Batali, who pairs the freshly made pasta with potatoes and baccalao. Dressed in a tomato-based sauce, the chewy bounce of the tagliatelle is always a thrill to eat, but it’s the baccalao that turns this dish into a meal. Rehydrated and sautéed in a bit of fat or olive oil, the cod retains the firmness of a cured product yet is still buttery and yielding to the bite.

If you make this dish, do be a deipnosophist while you are eating the pasta with friends and family. Yet another culinarily minded word given in this year’s bee, a "deipnosophist" is a person skilled in the art of dinner-table conversation. Clearly there are foodies aplenty on the board of the National Spelling Bee!

Works Cited:
American Bee by James Maguire



Tagliatelle with Salt Cod and Potatoes, adapted from Mario Batali’s Molto Italiano

Pasta dough, rolled out to form tagliatelle

Tomato sauce in the amount of one 28-oz. can of tomatoes, preferably San Marzano

1 russet potato, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

1 fillet of salted cod, about four ounces, cut into 1-inch cubes

Sauté the cubes of potato with olive oil until lightly browned. Add the cubed cod, and sauté until lightly browned. Add the tomato sauce and for approximately five minutes, until the cod is tender.

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil; add the tagliatelle and cook for approximately four minutes, until the pasta is still a bit raw in the middle. Remove the pasta and reserve the water.

Add the tagliatelle to the potato and cod mixture, cooking with a splash of pasta water until the pasta is al dente. Serve immediately.


Note: Do take the time to cure your own cod. Aficionados will go back and forth about the inferiority of home-cured cod, but I’ve been really pleased with my own curing experiments. I first learned how to cure cod from Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn’s excellent book, Charcuterie. Essentially, the cod is packed in salt for a day or so and then left to dry for a spell, until the meat is very firm and dessicated. Upon curing, the fish can be stored for months at a time in the refrigerator, which is exactly where my pieces of salt cod end up. There, in some dark corner, the baccalao awaits the days when I crave the distinctly dense texture that can only arise from cod that has been cured with salt.