Silver Case

King Crab night was perfect. First, Tien-Lee arrived at 5pm. She secretly came back earlier than Ling expected, so it was a happy shock for Ling. Lee brought me more than a kilogram of Woolloomoollo blend from Toby’s Estate coffee. She didn’t bring me fresh horseradish root, but I let it slide. It was fun having her here for a really happy dinner.

To accompany the two King Crab I grilled a big pile of vegetables: asparagus, incredibly sweet japanese onions, japanese eggplant, japanese peppers, and various japanese Mushrooms.

I also ad-hoc’d a Japanese-style soup. I simmered a few hundred grams of scallops (hotate) for an hour then mixed in mushrooms, wakame, white miso, crab surimi, and juices from the defrosting King Crab. It was fragrant and rich.

The crab? Easy to prepare, since the crabs are pre-cooked and flash-frozen immediately upon capture on the winter seas off Hokkaido. All I did was steam them for four minutes, clip the legs off, and then steam the main body for another four minutes (there tends to be ice still in the body despite defrosting in the fridge for a day).

I made clarified butter according to Alton Brown’s instructions. I took my butter (half pound unfrozen, instead of one pound), melted it on low heat. Once it melted, turned to medium heat. Then it foams and subsides. Then I turn the heat up again, until ti foams and subsides a second time. Then it’s done. There are burnt milk solids on the bottom of the pan, and a sum on the top. I lifted off the scum (tasted like sweet cheese) and ran the butter through a fine sieve, leaving clarified butter. When I made it I thought, “gee, this looks and tastes horribly bland” and almost added salt.

Thank God I didn’t, because there is something magical about clarified butter and crab — it is a taste force-multiplier. Unbelievably good. Sweet, soft, firm, just beautiful beyond words. And the meat it plentiful, there is not groveling and scraping for bits. Everything pulls away in nice, firm, large pieces. Eating King Crab is not slumming. I also couldn’t resist, and made a cocktail sauce from horseradish SAUCE (ugh) and ketchup. It is like something from a carnival, but gee it is good on every fourth piece of crab.

Since Lee was here, I pulled out a bottle of 2005 Scotchman’s Hill Sauvignon Blanc that was a very nice accompaniment to the whole meal.

It was so good and satisfying and pleasant that I told Ling to go buy another four of them to put in the freezer for the next time Mom, Dad, and Megan come visiting.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 4th, 2007 at 9:14 pm and is filed under Food.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.