crab

So…this happened: Epic Crab Pasta with Vodka Sauce and Garlic Breadcrumbs

February 24, 2014 by Eva Louise Leave a Comment

Stingray is coming home from Ethiopia soon and I can tell he’s seriously hankering for some of my homemade cooking. I thought it would be fun to drive his belly bonkers by posting this epic crab pasta with vodka sauce that I made for the family a while back. It’s a Serious Eats’ recipe for Pasta with Crab, Tomato, and Chilies and it’s a knockout. It’s a simple set of ingredients with a medium level of difficulty (you need to blend the hot tomato sauce which I find to be challenging to do without incident), and one of the few recipes I actually followed entirely. The recipe is made extra delicious with the addition of homemade garlic breadcrumbs; with these I can assure you, there will be no leftovers. I’m sorry to report (not!) that my version was made with fresh dungeness crab that Dad caught earlier in the day. Brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. Enjoy this beauty.

Pasta with Crab, Tomato, and Chilies

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
3 medium cloves garlic, minced (about 1 tablespoon)
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 (28-ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes, drained and roughly broken up by hand
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup vodka
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 small red hot chili, finely sliced (optional)
2 slices rustic bread, roughly torn
2 tablespoons minced fresh chives
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves
1 pound fresh spaghetti, fettucini, or tagliatelle (dry pasta can also be used)
1 pound lump or jumbo lump fresh crab meat (get the good stuff)

Instructions

Heat butter and 2 tablespoons olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat until melted and foaming subsides. Add garlic and red pepper flakes and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant but not browned, about 1 minute. Add tomatoes and heavy cream. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly reduced, about 10 minutes. Add vodka and simmer for 4 minutes longer. Don’t blow up the kitchen!
Transfer mixture to a blender and blend on high speed until completely smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper and transfer 2 cups to a large saucepan. Reserve remaining sauce for another use. Don’t burn yourself!
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Combine bread, a garlic clove and remaining olive oil in a food processor. Process until fine crumbs are formed. Transfer to a medium skillet and cook over medium-high heat, stirring and tossing constantly until golden brown. Transfer to a small bowl. Season bread crumbs to taste with salt and pepper and add a pinch of parsley and chives. Toss to combine. Set aside.
Add crab and optional sliced chilies to saucepan with sauce and stir to combine. Cook spaghetti in boiling salted water just until it is barely cooked through, about 2 minutes (if using dry pasta, cook according to package directions). Drain pasta, reserving 1 cup of cooking liquid. Transfer pasta to saucepan with sauce stir in remaining herbs. Heat over high heat until sauce is simmering and pasta is completely coated, adding reserved pasta water as necessary to thin sauce to desired consistency. Serve immediately, topping with bread crumbs.

Tofino Time: 2012 Foragers and Fishermens’ Mashup!

August 20, 2013 by Eva Louise Leave a Comment

My gorgeous dad, mom, sister and brother!

It’s that time of year again…Tofino Time! The whole family made the great trek West and North to beautiful British Columbia for our week long family holiday filled with foraging and fishing adventures. My trip in particular took a whopping 16 hours…grrr…so admittedly it’s taken the past few days to get into vacation mode, but I’m in it! I’m in vacation mode….weeee!

For those of you who know my family, food and cooking are the main features of any FFV (Fowler Family Vacation). So to get my inspirational juices flowing for the week ahead, I looked back on last year’s postings. I had just started up the bloggy and I had so much fun documenting all of our delicious meals and the hilarious adventures that got the food to the table. Here are a few of our 2012 highlights; I can’t wait to share this week’s culinary delights!

Mom’s bangin’ Smoked Salmon and Clam Chowder from Clamming Leads to Clam Chowder

This video pretty much sums up the Fowler Family:

One of my all time favorites Chanterelle and Goat Cheese Tart from What’d you do with all those Chanterelles?

And finally, the kind of epic, kind of a fail “Shumai.” I’ve gotten a bit better, but here’s the original Crab and Shrimp Shumai:

Tofino Time: Steamed Shrimp and Crab Shumai

August 13, 2012 by Eva Louise 2 Comments

Crab and Shrimp Shumai

This next week is the Tofino edition! The family and I are nestled in the balmy Pacific Northwest for a week of action-packed fun: fishing, prawning, crabbing, hiking, camping, and best of all – dinner roulette: where dinner is entirely dependent on whatever Dad catches on his 16-foot boat. Given that I’m with the fam damily this week, I’ll have some guest contributors!

Guest Contributor//Emily: There are about 1 trillion things that I adore about my sister – one of the biggest ones being that she has a true adoration and admiration for all things food. Of course, it’s always a pleasure to dine on whatever Eva “whips up”, but, since she always makes it look so fun, I thought I’d jump in. We cranked the Reggae, poured two glasses of wine and let the fun flow! Sissy and I are very similar and very different – in this case, our differences in the kitchen really do keep things smooth sailing. As her honorary sous-chef for the evening, I was keen on ensuring that she had a clean workshop to let her creativity flow. It’s really something to watch her work – a certain smell or color or texture will inspire a whole new direction, only more delicious than the previous one. I enjoy following her direction – in a life of constant unknowns, she is precise with her guidance and is mindful of being kind to a novice (like me). One of the greatest parts of this experience was capturing her creativity, documenting the magic that she really does create, and being able to celebrate it time and time again. – EJSF –

Last night, Emily and I decided to make shrimp and crab shumai because, you know, we just happened to have them fresh from Dad’s boat. For our shumai, we used my knight in shining armor – wonton papers – to make these delicious seafood dumplings, perfect as an appetizer. This is definitely an activity meal, so enlist a sous-chef before you get started and prepare these little pinwheels of delight in advance. Conversely, if this is part of the “performance” make sure guests have something to nosh on while watching the action.

Ingredients:

Fresh crab, shrimp, scallions, ginger

Shumai Filling

12 small shrimp, (can be raw or boiled)
1 cup fresh boiled crab
2 scallion, white and green chopped
1 T Fresh ginger finely chopped
Egg wash: ramekin of 1 scrambled raw egg and 1 T water

Asian-style goodness

Dipping Sauce

2 splashes Soy sauce
1 dash Rice wine vinegar
1 splash Sesame oil
Sesame seeds
1 t. Dijon mustard
1 pinch sugar
1 T fresh ginger, finely chopped
2 scallion, white and green chopped

The Gist:

The idea of the shumai filling is to have multiple textures, achieved by staging the mixing process. I was without my trusty Cuisinart for this recipe and used an old blender making it difficult to control this. We ended up simply rough chopping several ingredients by hand and mixing them in a bowl after we got the pasty base.

Shumai Filling

Make the dipping sauce first. This mixture will season the filling.
Add half the crab and shrimp and 2 T of dipping sauce to the food processor and mix until paste like.
Add the rest of the shrimp and crab and scallions and pulse.

Fake it ’til you make it…

To wrap the shumai:

Let’s be honest here – Emily and I had no idea what we were doing and had a blast taking creative license making our little dumplings. The nice thing about shumai too is that it’s actually opened on the top, so it made it easier to hide our neophyte skills. I’ve had shumai before and really like the pleating of the dumpling wrap so I attempted to replicate it. Regardless of your style, it’s important use the egg wash before pressing any two corners of the wonton paper together so they stick together.

Finally, steam the shumai, 3-5 minutes ideally in a bamboo steamer lined with cheesecloth (to keep the shumai from sticking). We didn’t have this luxury, so I poured enough water to cover 2 inches of the bottom of a large pot and fashioned a pedestal in the bottom using a trivet (so the bowl was not in direct contact with the burner) and an overturned bowl, then placed the plates of shumai directly on the raised surface one at a time. Worked out pretty well, thanks Sissy for all your help!

My oh my, shumai!