Steamed Crabs on the Brooklyn Paper

My usual fish people are not at the farmer's market these days, they go to Florida from January through March. There was a new fish guy on a recent Saturday morning and along with the workaday flounder and cod fillets, he was selling blue crab.

It was freezing outside that morning and the crabs were quite still in their basket. "Oh, they're alive alright," the fisherman said. "They're just cold." And he stuck his gloved hand into the bucket and picked up a crab. It immediately began snapping its claws at him.

But I've never cooked a crab in my life, I thought, and I certainly have no idea how to eat them. The fisherman showed me how to clean them on the spot, removing a kind of "tail" that is folded flat on the underside, and then pulling off the top shell. He showed me where the good meat is, and the orange coral, or roe. He said that crabs hibernate this time of year, and they are meatier and sweeter than they are in the warm weather. Sounds reasonable.

At this point I essentially had to buy a few crabs. He had sacrificed one to show me the cleaning process, after all. I bought a half dozen and we brought them to my friend Deetrane's house that evening where he steamed them with Old Bay seasoning and we went to town. They're not that difficult to eat, actually, although my fingers did acquire many tiny scrapes and puncture wounds, each of which was partially caurterized by the Old Bay.

So this past weekend, although no one would eat them with me (BrooklynLady is not a fan), I decided to try this at home. First, let me tell you, do not to look too closely at the crabs' faces when you're preparing them. They really do look like giant bugs from outer space.

I kept things simple and followed the Old Bay recipe, what I would call Baltimore-style, although please feel free to castigate me if I have slandered a regional classic. It says on the back of the can to mix equal parts water and vinegar, and to use a half cup of Old Bay to season the crabs before steaming them for about a half hour. I wonder why it's important to include vinegar in the steaming liquid?

A half cup looked like an awful lot of Old Bay. So I used a bit less than a quarter cup. I should have followed the recipe and used more, as a good deal of the seasoning ended up in the steaming liquid after cooking, not enough on the crabs. They were delicious anyway, but the Old Bay bites were the best bites.

I wanted to create a little bit of a Baltimore crab shack atmosphere in my dining room, so I spread out some newspaper and dumped the crabs right onto the table. Here, I must mention that the choice of newspaper is of great importance. Using the Daily News or the Post would surely have imbued the crabs with poor flavor. I could have used the Wall Street Journal, but I wanted the crabs to have joyous flavors, not bitter and frightened ones. The NY Times would probably have worked well, but I wanted my newspaper to lend the crabs an earthy local tone, nothing fancy, but nothing too shabby either.

I must say, it was almost a shame to eat the crabs - they looked so great splayed out on the Brooklyn Paper, all red from their steam bath, bit ruddy from the old bay. Anyone who eats crabs will tell you that things get messy very quickly.

And what to drink with this little feast? Deetrane and I drank Riesling at his house, and that was very good. There are several wines I was thinking about, and I almost opened a bottle of 1998 López de Heredia Rose. But in the end it just seemed like a meal that wanted cold beer. I poured a nice glass of Sly Fox Chester County Bitter, a cask beer from Pennsylvania whose light carbonation comes only from the fermentation in cask.

The whole thing was delicious, a special treat. And this time my fingers suffered only a few minor lacerations.