Soft Shell Crab Sandwiches
- By Katie Roche
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- 22 May, 2019
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This post was much-anticipated by a couple of my loyal taste-testers and as far as ItemQuests and overall unfamiliarity with ingredients and preparations go, it met all expectations you could have of an Ina experience. Pictured here are the rest of the fairly normal ingredients; as you might have guessed, the real difficulty came in acquiring the soft shell crab. Before I get into that, you're looking at ingredients for a remoulade that Ina serves on her sandwiches. I would have generalized remoulade as a "fancy mayonnaise" and I guess in this case it's kind of true, but technically according to the internet it necessarily involves hard-boiled egg yolks and is particular to salad or seafood. I really can't imagine how you'd mix hard-boiled yolks into a sauce, so I'm glad I didn't have to try and Ina went with the loose concept of "mayonnaise with a bunch of crap in it" for this. The rest of what's here was for breading the crab or serving with the crab. Utz crab-flavored chips courtesy of faithful blog-eater, Cam.
So apparently soft shell crab has a season, and I succeeded in this post coming around during that season. Because of that, I expectantly called around to several places in search of soft shell crab, and Seafood Mecca that it is (NOT), Columbia pretty much failed me all around. In my favorite game of Will The Butcher Answer The Phone and Acquire My Item or Not, this time the result was "not" and not only that, they really didn't direct me helpfully to anywhere else to go. I tried Whole Foods, of course, and repeatedly tried to call a seafood shop on Decker Blvd but only ever got a busy signal (in the year 2019, yes, for real) and then after several tries I finally found out from this place, Palmetto Seafood Company downtown on Gervais, that they get soft shell crab on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I walked in there the day I was going to make it, with reasonable expectation that I would be buying a fresh product. I was convinced I was going to be bringing home something alive, like that time in the soup chapter when I had that lobster clacking in its box in the backseat of my car all the way down Two Notch. I don't really know what people envision when it comes to seafood markets, but this wasn't really what I was expecting. I was taken aback by the shovel laying IN the product bin, as it was drilled into my head at Starbucks that leaving ice scoops in the ice was a health code violation. Skepticism rises, and yet, desperation prevails. (Honestly, that's a good working title for if I write a memoir of life trying to buy any food product in Columbia.)
Adding to the charm of this establishment is the fact that, in addition to buying seafood to prepare yourself, you can buy it prepared, and their menu has stuff on it like "deep fried alligator nuggets". I was helped by a nice lady named Addie, who had a lot of questions for me about how I was planning to prepare the soft shell crab. She told me she is being interviewed by a local magazine about her preparation method - naturally, deep frying because #southern - and she discerned that I was a "Yankee" and wanted to know all about how we cook crab "up there". Without worrying about distinguishing that Alaskans aren't Yankees because honestly, what would be the point, I did try to explain to her that I am, in fact, Alaskan and "my people" don't really eat soft shell crab. I'm not really sure if the common species of crabs found in Alaska don't do the whole molting of the exoskeleton thing that results in what they're calling soft shell crab in the Atlantic, but that is my suspicion. If you're more interested in biology than I am, look into that and get back to me.
Anyway, I let Addie know that I was following the recipe of a Hamptons-dweller for this blog post, so I could not really speak to regional preparations of soft shell crab; I hardly think Ina is a representative of northern-Atlantic culinary traditions. She's Her Own Thing, and if you've been reading along for a while, you know what I mean. I talked Addie through Ina's process, and went on my merry way with FROZEN soft shell crab... because apparently, you just can't buy it fresh? I still don't know. It wasn't what I expected or wanted, really, but if I'm looking on the bright side, I'm glad I didn't have to kill anything in my kitchen again. Though I'm sure Cam would have enjoyed that.
Adding to the charm of this establishment is the fact that, in addition to buying seafood to prepare yourself, you can buy it prepared, and their menu has stuff on it like "deep fried alligator nuggets". I was helped by a nice lady named Addie, who had a lot of questions for me about how I was planning to prepare the soft shell crab. She told me she is being interviewed by a local magazine about her preparation method - naturally, deep frying because #southern - and she discerned that I was a "Yankee" and wanted to know all about how we cook crab "up there". Without worrying about distinguishing that Alaskans aren't Yankees because honestly, what would be the point, I did try to explain to her that I am, in fact, Alaskan and "my people" don't really eat soft shell crab. I'm not really sure if the common species of crabs found in Alaska don't do the whole molting of the exoskeleton thing that results in what they're calling soft shell crab in the Atlantic, but that is my suspicion. If you're more interested in biology than I am, look into that and get back to me.
Anyway, I let Addie know that I was following the recipe of a Hamptons-dweller for this blog post, so I could not really speak to regional preparations of soft shell crab; I hardly think Ina is a representative of northern-Atlantic culinary traditions. She's Her Own Thing, and if you've been reading along for a while, you know what I mean. I talked Addie through Ina's process, and went on my merry way with FROZEN soft shell crab... because apparently, you just can't buy it fresh? I still don't know. It wasn't what I expected or wanted, really, but if I'm looking on the bright side, I'm glad I didn't have to kill anything in my kitchen again. Though I'm sure Cam would have enjoyed that.
What an unattractive food. They somehow LOOK wrinkled? Just odd. Anyway, I asked Addie what the deal is with cleaning them and she said I didn't need to. I really don't know what to make of that advice, but as Columbia is void of seafood authorities, I really had no one else to trust at that point. The idea of not cleaning something that came out of the Atlantic Ocean was tough for me to get on board with. I mean, I don't KNOW if the Atlantic is disgusting or anything, but if the water is anything like everything else about, say, Myrtle Beach, I want to bathe it and me and everything around it a million times over. Nevertheless, here I was, with uncleaned crabs, ready to be dredged and shallow fried.
The crabs rested in a milk bath to, I guess rehydrate them? while I prepared the flour mixture: just flour, cayenne, salt, pepper, and ground up pecans. I wondered about the absence of Old Bay in her recipe, as crab is The Food of Maryland's People first and foremost, and Old Bay is their spice. But I'm here to follow instructions, and for whatever else Ina may get wrong (looking at you, whole bottles of wine in things), she doesn't usually fail me on the seasoning of things. Anyway, thanks to Cam for this action shot of me dredging them.
The shallow fry begins! Ina recommended weighing them down "to make them extra crispy" by using a bacon press or a heavier pan. My cast iron skillet wouldn't fit, and I don't own a bacon press because INA, you taught us to bake our bacon!!! Why do YOU have a bacon press? Hmmm? Mediocre crispiness it is.
They honestly look really good here, if you can get past them being a whole entire animal you're going to eat all of.
I don't really feel like this remoulade is worth much attention, but here it is before I stirred it up - it's mayonnaise with stuff in it: Dijon, some dill pickles, dill, anchovy paste (UGH), capers, lemon zest, etc. I mostly posted the picture so I could say that it was underwhelming just like every other sauce people make with fish that isn't plain tartar sauce with Hellmann's mayo, onion, and dill pickles, the way tartar sauces is SUPPOSED TO BE. Honestly, for real, get OUT with your fresh dill. The dill is in the pickle and that's the only place it needed to be. If you're inclined to make a soft shell crab sandwich, read past this part of the recipe. It is irrelevant and takes a lot of measuring of things that shouldn't be there in the first place.
I think this is Cam's sandwich build because it looked the nicest. Kaiser roll on the bottom, remoulade, slice of Bibb lettuce, slice of tomato, and then one entire crab. We all ate this just fine until we got to the middle where there was a mysterious yellow substance, which subsequent internet research has led me to believe might be the "liver analogue"? Whatever that is. I'm not sure how some parts of animals sound completely normal to eat and others sound DEEPLY unappetizing. Like why is pork butt okay, but crab liver analogue sounds horrifying? I really wish I knew, because I had a real mental block with continuing after happening upon that yellow substance. It brought back too many memories of gutting salmon on the Kenai and rinsing anything not-meat-colored out in the river water before taking the fish home. That is, in my opinion, what you SHOULD. DO. Yellow substances should NOT be at the dinner table inside of whatever animal you're eating. Just no THANK YOU. We were all a bit off put by that.
The main verdict from the boys was that it is ESSENTIAL to eat the crabs hot or they're just not as good. I wholeheartedly agree, and am deeply amused that Cam and Michael each took one home and I know for sure Cam ate his leftover. My feelings are that: 1) tomatoes do not belong on sandwiches because they are just something slimy to get in the way of whatever you're actually trying to eat. Do not pretend they lend flavor. They do not. 2) Crab really does belong to the people of the state of Maryland. We need to leave it there. The best crab I've ever had in my life was in Annapolis, Maryland with my friend Denise, and I don't think any other crab will ever top it. Certainly no crab I bought from a seafood market in Columbia and shallow fried in my kitchen without any Old Bay ever will. I don't know what foods are culturally traditional to Long Island, or what you even catch in the ocean there other than maybe like, discarded Vineyard Vines chinos that have been cast off of a yacht by a drunken frat boy. But whatever is traditional to there, I'd really like to see her lean into that. I'm starting to develop a healthy level of skepticism for her preparations of things that are iconic to places that she does not live. For example, I recently read an article in which she legitimately used "OMG" to describe this amazing and novel FRIED CHICKEN SANDWICH she ate...at a SHAKE SHACK. I know, I know...we like what we like. But fried chicken of every kind belongs to the people of the south, crab belongs to the people of Maryland; neither Long-Island-Prepared or Storebought Is Fine.
The main verdict from the boys was that it is ESSENTIAL to eat the crabs hot or they're just not as good. I wholeheartedly agree, and am deeply amused that Cam and Michael each took one home and I know for sure Cam ate his leftover. My feelings are that: 1) tomatoes do not belong on sandwiches because they are just something slimy to get in the way of whatever you're actually trying to eat. Do not pretend they lend flavor. They do not. 2) Crab really does belong to the people of the state of Maryland. We need to leave it there. The best crab I've ever had in my life was in Annapolis, Maryland with my friend Denise, and I don't think any other crab will ever top it. Certainly no crab I bought from a seafood market in Columbia and shallow fried in my kitchen without any Old Bay ever will. I don't know what foods are culturally traditional to Long Island, or what you even catch in the ocean there other than maybe like, discarded Vineyard Vines chinos that have been cast off of a yacht by a drunken frat boy. But whatever is traditional to there, I'd really like to see her lean into that. I'm starting to develop a healthy level of skepticism for her preparations of things that are iconic to places that she does not live. For example, I recently read an article in which she legitimately used "OMG" to describe this amazing and novel FRIED CHICKEN SANDWICH she ate...at a SHAKE SHACK. I know, I know...we like what we like. But fried chicken of every kind belongs to the people of the south, crab belongs to the people of Maryland; neither Long-Island-Prepared or Storebought Is Fine.
For this post, I wanted to combine two summertime flavors into the crisp recipe one of my oldest Alaskan friends passed on to me years ago. Rhubarb, if you're unfamiliar, is a reddish stalk that kind of resembles really big celery. It's very tart and is most commonly paired with strawberry. I've rarely seen it star in its own show dessert-wise, but my friend Kylee has been making rhubarb crisp for years and it's the best crisp I know of. Blueberries are usually in season in late summer; I have not been home for a blueberry season since Dan's last deployment in 2018 so in order to make this recipe I actually used blueberries from a friend's parents' farm in upstate SC! They're a little sweeter than the blueberries I'd have picked at home, but they worked well. I'm going to pretend like I was actually picking blueberries at home in Alaska for the purpose of showing you what that would look like.
I was getting all ready to write this post, going through my process with photos starting in my kitchen when I realized that a lot of my friends probably don't know what fireweed is or where it comes from and this recipe actually starts far, far away from my kitchen. This will be the first of a few posts highlighting iconic Alaskan ingredients. I've wanted to do this for a while because my home inspires me in so many ways, writing and cooking particular among them. Fireweed is a wildflower that is rather ubiquitous in southcentral Alaska and is often considered a gauge for how long summer will last. It is said that when the blooms reach the top of the plant, winter is six weeks away. Whether or not that's accurate, fireweed is found all over in late summer in Alaska. Here is some I spotted in mid-July by Eklutna Lake:
If you know Dan and me very well, you probably know by now that if our life were a sitcom, he'd low-key be the funniest character. Because that is true, I thought I'd include his bottom ten with accompanying remarks before giving the actual bottom ten. His are hilarious, but aren't as legitimate as mine because he actually tried way fewer of these than one might think. I realized as he was flipping through the book that my old coworker Cam probably ate more of these foods than anyone else did. The overarching theme of Dan's song of Ina Garten hatred is not the actual taste of the finished product but more how asinine he finds that particular recipe to be. So here you are, Dan's bottom ten.
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
You guys asked for my top ten from the blog, so here we go! And I'm thinking that what you *really* want is actually the bottom ten, so I'll go ahead and give you those next week. That post will probably be A LOT funnier. While preparing to write this post, I had Dan flip through the cookbook to give me HIS top ten and he was all disgruntled as he did so and only came up with eight that he even liked at all. "I'm not a picky eater!" he insists. Yeah ok. Although to be fair, I've seen some cookbooks I would only make, like, one thing out of and plenty I'd make nothing out of, though sometimes that's because I find the chef so annoying. @ the Pioneer Woman. I just don't trust someone who puts sour cream in spaghetti and then bakes it. Plus all her recipe intros are about, like, Ladd or Tadd or whatever the heck her husband's name is "coming in from the fields starving for dinner". If I came in from working in a field and you tried to give me sour cream spaghetti, I'd be like, "How about a hot pocket instead? Thx." Anyway, this is not Dan's blog so these are not his top ten. You can ask him which ones he liked, but you'll end up in a long convo about how much he hates Ina Garten. Anyway, these are not ranked or anything, they're just in order from the cookbook.
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
It was Sunday afternoon and I thought to myself, "What a perfect time to make jam!" I mean, how positively quaint: just sitting in my home in suburbia, finished with weekend chores, relaxing with some knitting...why not? Why not make some jam? I mean, obviously my afternoon-kitchen-activity was directed toward jam-making because it was next up in the book BUT whatever, I was kind of excited! Also, this is the last recipe in this book!!! I'm still in the process of deciding what I'll do now, so if there's something you'd like me to make and tell you about in my own fashion - you know, with lots of tangents and jokes - please do let me know! I'll likely continue to tackle Ina content, but may start including some recipe faves and/or foods people text me about a lot! I get a lot of cake questions, a LOT of frosting questions (because meringue buttercream is bae and I've got everyone in my social circles who eats my food on board), and a lot of fish questions. So look for more food to come, even though this is the last recipe in Back to Basics.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
I was glad Ina gave me something easy for this week, because I was packing for Alaska and just *did not have the time* to mess with hunting lobsters or weird cheeses from the internet or whatever. ItemQuest was fairly straightforward, just took Dan a trip to the liquor store next to the Publix for some limoncello. I grabbed this particular lemon curd in the British aisle of Publix; I think last time an Ina recipe called for lemon curd I bought it from Trader Joe's and it was DISGUSTING. I mean, truly awful. I would like to recommend making your own lemon curd if you have the time and the inclination. Ina's lemon curd recipe is phenomenal and it is one thing for which I can say she is truly correct: homemade is BETTER and store-bought is not at all as good. The most beloved cupcakes I have ever made were filled with Ina's lemon curd, and had the lemon curd mixed into the meringue buttercream frosting. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!! Anyway, the rest of this was fruit that I had on hand, mint, and Greek yogurt which we did have to buy because I don't, as a rule, eat Greek yogurt of my own free will. It's chalky and disgusting.
Dates are something I honestly never even thought about until I did Whole 30. I have mentioned my Whole 30 experience several times over the course of this journey through Back to Basics, but if you're new to reading the blog, this is what happened: I did Whole 30 one time, just to prove that I could, because salvation-by-diet apologists were obsessed with it as the newest fad in righteous eating practices. It was a terrible experience; on top of hating every minute of it for myself and finding exactly zero wellness benefits, I also hated it for Dan who was not allowed to eat popcorn for 30 days. Dan is in love with popcorn; his addiction to it is almost at the level of my addiction to coffee. He gets rage-y without it. But anyway, Whole 30 recipes are big into dates as sweeteners and some of the things you can eat, like Lara Bars, are made with dates. Dates are impossibly chewy. I ate more of them in that 30 days than I ever wanted to, and now when I see them in recipes I can't help but think of that Whole 30. Fortunately for me, I got to begin this recipe by chopping TWO CUPS' worth of dates. Oh, they also kind of look like cockroach bodies, so there's that. The only thing I actually had to get at the store for this was oranges! I had everything else on hand, even Cointreau, thanks to many previous Ina recipes.
Alright so, I'm not the Muffin Man. I don't really make a whole lot of muffins, for a lot of reasons, one of the main ones being that on the rankings of breakfast foods they definitely do not crack the top five, maybe not even the top ten. If I have an option for a bagel or a waffle, I'll pick one of them over a muffin every single time. I also prefer cereal, cinnamon rolls, or *cue eye roll* avocado toast. I've just never risen from my slumber and been like, "You know what would really hit the spot right now? A MUFFIN." But!!! In recent months, since my friend Logan came into my life, I've been making muffins a lot more frequently because he really loves them. So the last blueberry muffins I made were from a 99cent Betty Crocker mix packet which he brought into my house and asked me sweetly to make, because they're what he grew up with and along with many preservatives, they are full of nostalgia for him. Here is Logan and me, preparing to mix the muffin batter. Out of respect (and to make up for the disrespect of rolling up with muffin mix), he wore one of my aprons. I will treasure this picture forever.
You guys...Ina has "a thing" about commercial granola bars. Her beef with them, apparently, is that they say they contain real fruit and nuts but that all she sees when she looks at the labels are like, ten different kinds of corn syrup. I'm going to go ahead and guess, just based on this, that none of the lunches her mom packed for her growing up contained any Fruit By the Foot. And surely if we introduced her to Gushers, she would die. This is a real shame. I also feel like this disdain for corn syrup is maybe just a tad self-righteous, coming from the woman whose frosting recipe calls for literally six entire sticks of butter. At that point, what's a little corn syrup to you really? People's nutritional hills-to-die-on really fascinate me (and also kind of annoy me sometimes) and the ones about sugar might get me the most. I feel like, at some point, sugar is sugar and whether you're baking with honey, white sugar, brown sugar, molasses, maple syrup, etc you're still probably making something that's not amazing for you so, in terms of sugar, why not just be in for a penny in for a pound, amirite? So while I'm on this topic, before I even get to the actual point (please, I know you're here for the tangents), I would like to just let anyone and everyone know that I'm absolutely not interested in your "healthy substitutes" for things that taste good in their original form. I do not WANT a chocolate chip pancake made out of bananas and grains you harvested in your field this morning. If I want a banana I will eat one, and if I want a chocolate chip pancake I will eat one, and that's that. And DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT come @ me with "cashew cheese". Just don't. I don't even think I should honor that concept with an explanation of why it's so wrong. If that's not self-evident, I can't help you.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
At first I saw the pictures of this and thought, "YAY!!! Cinnamon rolls!" And then a couple of weeks ago, I actually tried making cinnamon rolls for the first time and realized that my inability to roll/shape/slice yeast doughs is still a thing. AND THEN I read this entire recipe and realized these get filled with raisins. So here we go!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!