Mixed Greens Blog

We have a state bird, a flower, a song, a fish, a gem, vegetable, tree, fossil, insect, dance, grass (I’m not kidding) . . . why not a state crustacean?  It would have to be Dungeness crab.

The mind can run with this. Our state’s crustacea on license plates. Our next b-ball team would be the Crabs, ‘we pinch, don’t mess with us’.  We’d have a dance, the crabwalk, to replace our vintage state dance, the Square dance, or better yet, partner up with the Square dance.

Seriously, whatever foods are indigenous to a place permeate its culture. The Pacific Northwest is of apples and desert, fish and ocean, wheat and rolling dry hills. Dungeness crab characterize our connection with the sea, and it doesn’t hurt that its five pair of legs, pincers, hard shell and beady eyes add visual flavor as well as a sublime culinary repertoire.

Our family began a tradition of crab for Christmas day dinner years ago. One year, two of our members, needing to find a quiet respite from their eighteen or so beloveds, began to shell a pile of fresh crab. By dinnertime they had produced a large bowl full. Now there’s a gift, a pile of crabmeat, handpicked and generously shared with the other eighteen.  It’s become an annual ritual, always that bowl of crabmeat to get us started; we’re grateful for each pre-picked bite.  There are the pickers and the pilers at our table,  either way we eat our crab very simply with lemon, a couple of favorite sauces, salad and bread.

Winter’s a good time to enjoy Dungeness crab. I made this crab salad with seasonal vegetables and a dressing concocted to emulate one we enjoyed at Wild Ginger the other night.  This dressing leans in the right direction and is wonderful with the crab, but it’s not Wild Ginger.  Sorry.  We do what we can.

Winter’s Crab Salad:
1 Celeriac
1 Carrot
1 Beet (uncooked)
1/2 Daikon radish

Parsley or cilantro

Fresh crab

Chop these vegetables very finely and uniformly.  A grater, food processor, mandolin, or skilled knifery will do.  I used a mandolin to create large thin pieces, piled those together and finished by slicing thinly across the bunch – a julienne. I ended up with crisp little matchsticks of each veggie.

Keep the beets separate until time to serve and even then, dress everything else before carefully adding beets to the mix. (They’ll ‘bleed’ and color other ingredients.) They’re a dazzling and tasty addition, but must be handled carefully. Place vegetables on plates with crab and a hard boiled egg if you like.  Drizzle with a little more dressing and freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice.  Garlic bread on the side.

Dressing:

1 smashed clove of garlic, 1 t fish sauce, 3 T lime juice, 2 T rice vinegar, 1 T soy, 2 t sugar, 1 t sesame oil,  2 T peanut or olive oil, cilantro if you have it or parsley, Jalapeno or Serrano chili finely chopped and added to taste.

Whisk these ingredients together. Taste and add more or less of whatever you wish. Use lime juice in lieu of vinegar or visa versa, substitute honey for sugar.  Toss dressing with julienned vegetables and make two large or four small servings on separate plates. This salad is delicious with or without crab, and even dressed it’s as good or better the second day.

A few things about the Dungeness crab:

The Dungeness crab’s season is a little ambiguous.  Though it seems to be available year-round, several websites proclaim the superior health of the crab and thus the meat during winter months. The annual harvest begins each year on December 1, when the crabs are hard-shelled, full of meat and in their prime.

Dungeness is meaty for a crab, 1/4 of its weight is meat.

Crabs molt periodically in order to grow.

They have 5 pair of legs.  Num.

They live among eelgrass beds in the Pacific from Alaska to CA.

The largest Dungeness crab are found off the coast of WA state.

Dungeness, WA (named by George Vancouver in 1792 because it resembled a similar spit in England) is the namesake of the Dungeness crab.

After harvest, crabs enter a starvation phase that results in loss of calcium and an immediate weakening of the shell.  Test freshness by bending outer section of its legs, the claw. If they’re pliable they’re not so fresh. To harvest and eat within a day or so is ideal.