[Sca-cooks] period crab recipes

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jun 20, 2006, at 9:37 PM, Stefan li Rous wrote:

> With soft shelled crabs, do you eat the shells? Or does this stage
> just make them easier to get through the shell to the meat?

Generally you eat the shells, and they're often a bit softer than a  
shrimp shell.

> There are
> some oriental restaurants here which serve a dish of whole shrimp,
> including heads and shell, that I believe you are supposed to eat
> without peeling. Rather messy otherwise since they have a coating of
> spices and such. I'm still trying to get used to the texture.

Generally what you do (correction: what Southern Chinese do, I can't  
say what other Asians do) is lift the shrimp to the mouth with your  
chopsticks, bite off a hunk, move it around your mouth a bit to get  
the seasonings or sauce from the shell, chew lightly, which separates  
larger pieces of shell from the meat, then you reach into your mouth  
with your chopsticks mouth open as little as possible, ideally with  
lips closed, grab the pieces of shell, and remove them and put them  
on the side of your plate. If you do end up eating a bit of shell,  
it's no biggie.
>
> I do remember getting whole crabs on a Florida vacation one time.
> These were the hard-shell kind and eating them seemed to be rather
> difficult. Reminded me very much of dissecting various critters in
> High School biology class. A lot of trying to figure out what was
> what and whether it was edible or not.

In general, anything not shell, eyes, stomach bag or gill fibers, are  
edible. It's really not that difficult, as long as you can afford to  
get seafood juice on your clothes and such. Some old Maryland Ladies'  
Auxilliary Cookbooks recommend dressing in a bathing suit and  
spreading newspaper on the table...

> Rather "gooshy" and not for
> the squeamish.

Well, there's the concept that that is not for the squeamish, but  
then many squeamish people are simply those who've never been exposed  
to stuff like that, and/or who don't adapt after encountering it.

> I can see why many folks prefer King Crab legs and
> claws. Difficult to get the meat out of, at times, but less
> dissecting and figuring out what is edible.

Eeeeeh, yes, but not as sweet, juicy, or as good. As for figuring out  
what's edible, see above. It's not rocket science, but like most  
things, you sort of have to want to be good at it to be good at it.  
If you don't want to be good at it, you won't be, no matter how many  
times some experienced Bay crab-picker sits you down and shows you.

One of the fun parts of my son's summer last year was being in the  
Chesapeake Bay area and having family members show him how this  
delicate surgery is done, only to find that he was better at it than  
they were. When they asked him who had taught him to eat crabs like  
that, he said, "Grandma Wong. What? What did I say?"

Adamantius