California’s annual crab season started less than two months ago, and doesn’t end until June 15, but already some fishermen are hauling in empty nets and putting them away until next year. What is going on?
Apparently the often-robust Dungeness crab harvest is a cyclical thing that has just bottomed out, so to speak. Fewer boats going out means fewer crabs ¬– as well as higher prices. But that doesn’t mean that crustacean aficionados have lost their taste for crabmeat. Last week, I called my favorite crab provider only to be told they had none, though they expected to have some later that day. Price? $8.99 a pound, cooked, cleaned and cracked.
I tried another tack, calling Leonard’s Bait Shop in the marina at Port Sonoma and leaving a message. Joel Sinkay, who co-owns the bait shop with his wife, Debbe, phoned back. “I have about 25 right here,” he said. “If you want to come get some, I’ll wait for you.”
I asked how come he had fresh crab when almost no one else did. “Because we are dedicated to our job,” said Sinkay. “We work hard.” Indeed, the night before he had made one of his frequent trips all over the Bay Area – on dry land – to pick up crabs from as far away as Berkeley and bring them back alive to Sonoma.
The price was $7.50 a pound, which sounded like a deal, especially considering the efforts he made to wrangle the catch. I suppressed the little voice in my head whispering that I would have to clean and crack them myself.
So it was that the next day on my way back to Sonoma from Petaluma, I turned off Highway 37 in the middle of this mysterious no-man’s land, looped back, parked and made my way to the rickety-looking shack at the end of the pier.
Inside, hunkered near a stove while the rain pelted the windows, a man named Billy was there to help. He took me outside, and hoisted from the briny depths a crate in which live crabs were skittering across the bottom. They were humongous, a bit over two pounds apiece, each with a claw span of maybe 12 inches.
Billy assured me they would be fine out of water for several hours, took my money and handed me a rather flimsy pair of paper bags holding the crabs. When I got to the Sun office, I set the bags on the newsroom floor and tried to get fearless photographer Ryan Lely to go for the bait. He refused. I peeked inside the bag, which by now was scuttling across the floor, and saw two all-but-liberated crabs, claws snapping in the air.
With the crabs securely – I hoped – in the trunk of my car, I headed for home as I plotted which neighbor I would tap to deal with Crab No. 2. Bonnie Faulkner was game. “You mean, they’re alive? Do you know how to cook them?”
Well, I used to, back when I caught little blue crabs off Tybee Island and tossed them into the pot of boiling water my parents had ready. Then I probably went swimming and next thing I knew, was called back to start cracking. Boiling crab by proxy was the extent of my experience.
First, for these monsters, a pot won’t do. What you need is something along the lines of a cauldron. Even though I found the right size on a garage shelf, there was the further challenge of getting the water to boil. I started heating water in smaller pots while I set up the cauldron, straddling it across two burners. Even then, it took forever for the water to boil.
You need enough water (I think I put in about eight quarts) to completely cover the crabs. Then I tossed in fistfuls of salt – some kind of homage to the sea, or perhaps a wishful peace offering – and then waited until the water returned to a full rolling boil before, uh, inserting the crabs. For this, what you want is a really long, sturdy pair of tongs. But man, those critters were not going to go quietly.
As I struggled, going pincer-to-pincer with the wily creatures, I lost my one-handed grip again and again, picturing a scene out of “Annie Hall,” only not nearly as amusing as the audience had found it. The basset hound was hyper-focused on the squirming bag and the occasional glimpse of a red claw, which had me a tad concerned.
It’s important to add one crab at a time so that the water never stops boiling entirely. At last, I got both crabs in the pot and waited until the water returned to a full boil. The hard part was over – except for the timing. Billy had said “15 minutes, max.” The Sonoma Market had told Bonnie they cook 30 or 40 at once, so timing for two would be tricky. We agreed on 18 minutes and when the timer went off, I plucked out the crabs and popped them into bowls of cold water to stop the cooking.
What Bonnie had begun calling “an adventure” was more like hard, dangerous work. With a paring knife, I pried back the carapace of one, got a good look at the sloppy, briny innards and made an executive decision. We would eat leftovers that night and address the cleaning issue the next day.
This task is best done out of doors, with a running hose at the ready. If you have a garbage disposal in good working order, you could do this part in your kitchen. The aroma is really not all that horrible, but it can suppress one’s appetite for seafood.
Even “Joy of Cooking” doesn’t give explicit directions for cleaning, but basically, you scrape out anything you wouldn’t eat, plucking off the feathery lung sections and scraping out the soft liver with a small spoon. Then rinse the crabs thoroughly and, ideally, clean up the exterior with a vegetable brush. Or not.
Every Southerner is equipped with utensils for cracking the claws (and tiny forks as well as a device for getting meat out of nooks and crannies, though you can use the tip of another claw for that). We split the crabs in half by hand, whacking gently a couple of times with the side of a hammer swathed in a clean sock. (A mallet would have been a better choice.)
As I dined on the most delicious crab in memory, I realized that my gear – unlike that of some fishermen – would stay out all season.
Dipping sauce
I prefer my crabmeat chilled. The following recipe is an approximation; I suggest starting with a small batch of sauce, then tinkering with it to suit your own taste. Bonnie and I both used Best Mayonnaise, Meyer lemon juice, horseradish and Worcestershire sauce. Her version tasted bitter while mine was delicious, so we determined the difference lay in the brand of horseradish.
Ingredients
Best Mayonnaise
Mezzetta cream-style horseradish
Meyer lemon juice
Worcestershire sauce
Preparation Instructions
Put mayonnaise in a medium bowl; stir in horseradish, in a ratio of about 3 tablespoons to 2 teaspoons. Squeeze in Meyer lemon juice (two or three squeezes, just enough to make the mixture creamier), blend with a mini-whisk and add a few splashes of Worcestershire sauce, perhaps a half-teaspoon to start. Taste, add more of whichever ingredients seem right to you.
