Small things that feel great...

[beepbeep]

This night I went out around 22.30, in order to visit local foodshop (just about to close). I didn't have anything particular in mind, I was just sleepless and tought about buying a magazine, an icecream...whatever. I just kicked my nicotine habit and I'm not terribly good at sitting home alone doing nothing, to say the least.

Wandering aimlessly in the shop, I passed the seafood part and noticed bright red price stickers on items. Shop had a "seeafood weekend" and was now selling the rest far bellow ordinary prices. And there it was... a perfect example of "cancer pagurus"...a fresh seacrab, weighting at least 1kg. They were selling a poor sucker for 5$ and I knew that if I didn't "rescue it" it would probably go into trash can tommorow and not into somebody's stomach. A loss of perfectly good crab. So into basket it went.

I came back home around 23.00. I felt somewhat stupid for buying a big crab in the middle of the night and was thinking about going to sleep. GF is working night shift and after all, I have a job interview tommorow afternoon.

But then...there is nothing better than having a nice meal in the middle of the night, when nobody is interupting you. So to the kitchen I went.

First I had to come up with some sort of marinade to cook the crab in. I came up with this: Water (around 1.5L), salt, vinegar (red), dill (lotäs of it), sugar (just a spoon), garlic and white wine. I let it cook up and threw in the crab.

While crab was getting red, I boiled couple potatoes in second saucepan (with lot's of dill) and threw in asparagus, field mushrooms, white wine and dill (yeah, dill everywhere) into third one (mushrooms should be added into water a bit later, otherwise they get overcooked).

The last touch was making a sauce. I experimented a bit and mixed sweet-chili sauce with creme-fraische (~50/50), added some white wine and hacked half of chili into it (with sax, so it looks like small red rings) to spicy it up. Then I mixed it up until it was uniform.

Crab cooked for exactly 15 minutes, smelled wonderfull (probably due to garlic and white wine) then it went on balcony to cool down. During that time the asparagus & mushrooms were done, so were potatoes.
After crab cooled down, I split it into two halves from below with a bigh knife.

I served all on the plate...paying attention about visual appeal and laughing at myself for doing all this in the middle of the night. Last touch was some sea salt flakes and a glass of red wine I found somewhere (Fetzer Zinfandell, californian and actually quite good!)

So there it goes...food usually doesn't taste as good if you make it yourself but this certainly tasted better than it looked! Only minor problem was that I had to use a hammer to crack the enormous claw but it was worth it!


Goodnight from a very satisfied night eater!

[Joeaksa]

Thank you for helping that crab die an honorable death!

Hope its happy swimming with that nice wine!

Joe

[legion]

Whew!

I saw the title on this thread and feared my wife had started it.

[TerryH]

So we're not talking about the crabs feelings? I was sure you rescued the crab and set it free on the beach.

I love to eat lobster and crab, but can't toss live critters into a boiling pot. Just give me the bib, some butter, and keep em coming.