My younger daughter crabbing in the marsh
Crabs and Spaghetti are on the table. It's the end of Summer: the season for crabs, big blue-claw crabs. It's the time for the big family dinner. This is the most important dinner of the year after Christmas Eve. All the cousins that can will be there. We'll eat outside on the porch. The table will be set with finger bowls and wet towels. Everyone will have a paper bib. Dessert is equally important: peach cobble with vanilla ice cream.The Italian Roman Catholic feast of the Assumption on August 15th may have some connection with this dinner. The date tends to coincide. But, I have found no substantive connection. What I can say is that in South Jersey, as in Italy, August 15th is a day that unites the fisherman with the bounty of the sea. It i the day for the blessing of the water and of the boats. In our family the connection was with the crabs.
http://www.ladystarofthesea.org/olss/Mass/ Going crabbing is an important date.The day before we have to plan for the catch. The most important consideration is the tide and the weather. The best time to catch crabs is on the shifting tide. The incoming tide is the better of the two. With a little luck, the day will be overcast. Crabbing day is the one day of summer when you don't want too much sun. On this day, the tide will start its way in around 9 am The crab baskets come out of the garage. We check all the lines for dry rot then load them into the car. The first stop is the bait store for a half dozen frozen bunker. There is always a discussion on where the best crabbing spot is. Some want a bulkhead on the back bay, others think crabbing in the marsh is better. The marsh site wins out. The smell of marsh gas is quite distinct. One step into the marsh and your up to your ankles in black shoe-sucking muck. Little fiddler crabs scurry around your feet in and out of their tunnels. In the time it takes to drive from the bait store to the marsh, the August heat has thawed the bunker. We unload the car and find our place in the salt marsh. We set out the traps. You push a thick string through the bunker's eye with a sharp knife and secure it to the basket base. (By the way, "bunker" is not a place to hide in battle. It's a kind of otherwise inedible fish used for bait.) The tide is coming in. the tide brings with it all those sweet blue claw crabs that will be dinner.With the bait in place we cast our baskets into the water. You can cast the basket like a Frisbee or you can do a kind of pendulum swing. I've even seen folks who can do an overhand cowboy lasso circle throw. Everyone has a personal technique. The essential thing is to have the basket sink flat. To assure the sinking there are even those who attach a lead weight to the basket bottom.
The horseflies bite:it's a real bite, not the itchy sting of a mosquito. Horseflies make welts the size of a quarter. We wait.You have to have patience. Then, something tells you, "pull!" You grab the line.You pull. The basket scoops up the crabs. or sometimes a clump of seaweed, or a piece of driftwood or even a fish. We're having a good day. Basket after basket has a catch. Some, however, are small and have to go back. But crabbing is not always so easy. Like so many other fish and crustaceans that once filled the waters of South Jersey, the Blue Claw can sometimes be hard to find. I would guess that the intense overpopulation of the Jersey sand bar islands have pushed away much of the natural sea life. Fifty years ago, just an hour or two of crabbing along the back bay would have yielded a good two dozen nicely sized Blue Claws. Now, it takes all morning for an even dozen.
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So, yes, I still take my children out with our baskets. We still go through the bunker eye piercing ritual and we tramp through the slimy mud. Sometime we catch nothing and must resort to buying our crabs from the pier. But when the catch is good, there is nothing better. There us a real sense of accomplishment. With our catch back at home, I'm usually the one who does the cleaning. Unlike crab boils, crabs in this recipe must be split and cleaned before they are cooked. The outer shell comes off and the lungs and guts are scraped away. It's a bit tedious and can be a bit rough on the fingers.
The cooking of the crabs and the sauce must be done in three stages. The cleaned crabs are steamed in wine and garlic. You then remove them from the pot and set them aside, leaving all the liquid behind. The tomatoes are then added to the pot where they simmer in the liquid for about 45 minutes. The crabs are returned to the sauce just before serving. Eating the crabs is a particular art.First, everyone at the table gets a wet cloth.This is not a neat dinner.The spaghetti goes with a fork as usual, but for the crabs you use your hands. Start by holding the half crab in both hands and then crack it in two. Take each of these pieces and crack them in half. Put the quartered crab to your mouth, then tooth and suck out the sweet white meat from the crab's center. Next, go for the claw. Set the fat first digit of the claw between your teeth at its center. Crack the shell with your teeth. Pull away and you will find a nice large chunk right inside. Do they same with each of the small legs. By now, you are covered, fingers and face with sauce.This is why you need the wet cloth. Here's a fun side note for the kids. After you've cracked open the claw and removed its meat, you will see the tendon that operates the claw. Give it a push and pull and the claw opens and closes. As kids we loved to make those pinchers bite the air. There is nothing like a summer's dinner of crabs and spaghetti. It's the culmination of summer. It's the sky, the water, the sweet atmosphere of tomato and crab and salt air. Crabs and spaghetti are a recollection of some primitive time of the hunter and gatherer finding his food among the grassy marshes.Crabs and spaghetti is a sense of freedom from all cares: a perpetual and physical memory of childhood cradled in a bowl. I would also propose that crabs and spaghetti is a distinctly Italian American recipe that may even be limited to the Philadelphia/ New Jersey area. While I found several recipes from Italy and from America that use the meat from crabs, I haven't found anything that resembles what I have set out here where the whole crab is the main part of the dish. This recipe is what I know from childhood. It's a preservation of old time recipes. The final part of this dinner is the traditional dessert:a wonderful peach cobbler made from just picked Jersey peaches. Serve the cobbler hot and top it with traditional Breyer's Philadelphia style (no gums or additives) vanilla ice cream. 
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What you need
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Equipment.
Large pot or broad sauté pan. Pot for the spaghetti. Cleaver. Hammer or meat pounder. Small paring knife. |
Ingredients
Crabs. Allow at least one crab per person.
Tomatoes. A can of Cento San Marzano tomatoes or two cups of fresh tomatoes that you have chopped and crushed. Garlic. About five or six cloves. White Wine. About one cup. Olive oil. Enough to coat the pan and then to drizzle over the final dish. Salt and Pepper. Hot Pepper Flakes: optional. Spaghetti. Try to find a good imported variety. If you live near Manhattan you can find some truly great pastas. Buon Italia in Chelsea Market carries the most traditional of all pastas made in Torre Annunziata, a town near Naples. Eataly on 5th opposite Madison Square also carries a great variety of Italian pastas. Carlino's in suburban Philadelphia's has a nice selection. Other than that, I can only hope that you have a good Italian deli in your area. |
Getting it together: the mise-en-place
Splitting the crabs
First, arm yourself with a very sharp cleaver and some kind of hammer or meat pounder. With these two instruments you will send the crabs to another world.
Using tongs, pull out a single crab from your dozen. This can be a bit tricky since the crabs will tend to grab on to one another. Turn the crab on its back. ( It should be a male. Males have a pointed apron, females have a rounded apron. Check this out online.) Set the cleaver or very sharp knife directly over the center of the crab. With one quick blow slam the back of the cleaver with the hammer or meat pounder. The crab will quickly split in two. If you are worried about humane treatment of animals (as I am.) please remember that a crab is something of an extended spider and its brain is somewhat minimal. |
Remove the shell
When the crabs are split in half they way continue to shudder. This is only nerve endings doing their final thing. Now, take each half in your hand. With your thumb peel back the apron and push off the top shell .
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Cleaning the crabs
Now you will see the filaments of the lungs. Under running water use your fingers or a small knife to scrape off the lung filaments.
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Washing
Now, look at the center. You will see a mish-mash of yellow and orange. Again, use your fingers or a small knife to scrape these away under running cold water.
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The cleaned crabs
With all the guts removed you should now have very white and clear halves of Blue Claw crabs.
Already cleaned crabs. I must also say, that if you want to avoid the work, some quality stores such as you may find in South Philadelphia on 9th Street, will have the halves cleaned and prepared for you in advance.
Already cleaned crabs. I must also say, that if you want to avoid the work, some quality stores such as you may find in South Philadelphia on 9th Street, will have the halves cleaned and prepared for you in advance.
Tomatoes
Use either summer fresh or San Marzano canned tomatoes.
Crush the tomatoes with your fingers. Set the tomatoes to the side. |
Garlic
Peel and chop the garlic.
Set aside. |
Cooking
Garlic
Heat the olive oil in a wok or large skillet.
Add the garlic. Let it sauter slightly. Do not let it brown. |
Crabs, garlic and wine
Add the crabs.
Immediately pour over them about a half cup of white wine. (Do not let the garlic brown.) Cover the pot. The crabs will cook in under three minutes. |
Crabs turn pink
Lift the lid and check. The claws should now be bright pink-red.
Remove the crabs to a side bowl. You don't want to overcook them in the sauce. |
The sauce - continued
Add the crushed tomatoes to the wine and garlic that remain.
Salt and pepper. Dry red pepper flakes to taste. (optional) Let the sauce simmer alone for about thirty minutes. (Not the crabs.) |
The spaghetti
Fill a large pot with water. Salt it liberally.
When the water boils, add the spaghetti. Cook the spaghetti a minute or two less than suggested. I go no more than about seven minutes. The spaghetti will finish cooking in the sauce. |
Finishing with the crabs
At about six minutes into the spaghetti, ladle some of the pasta water into the sauce - about two ladles.
At seven minutes or so, using tongs, transfer the spaghetti into the sauce. Let the spaghetti go about another minute or two. Test for doneness. Add the crab halves and stir them in.Check for Black pepper and salt. (Red pepper flakes optional.) |
Serving
Transfer to a large serving bowl, or, in the most traditional way, dish it out directly from the pot.