Last week, I accepted a dinner invitation from an ex-boyfriend to dine with two old, out-of-town friends at Bar Crudo. It would seem that I can be lured nearly anywhere by the promise of raw shellfish and wine.

It was an oddly comfortable dinner. There was none of the awkwardness that typically accompanies former couples who find themselves momentarily placed in the situation of acting as partners again, even though the partnering has been limited to the dinner table. Dining-- especially from shared dishes-- is an activity that is unmistakeably intimate. I decided to not focus on the obvious questions like why on earth would he invite me to dinner to meet two of his oldest friends or why I had accepted the invitation. Rather, I decided to focus on his friends and the platters of seafood that had been so carefully placed in front of us.

His friends were smart, charming, and very enthusiastic. Dismay was expressed by his friend Lindsay over the prospect of eating raw oysters-- an activity in which she had never before engaged, but was willing to give them a chance, nevertheless. I ordered the smallest, sweetest ones on the menu, to make the exercise as easy as possible. She gave them a go, declared them good, and then immediately turned her attention to the one half of a Dungeness Crab carcass lying lifeless on the pile of ice that both separated and united us.

When she saw crab on the menu, her eyes went wide behind her glasses. When our waitress explained that there was only one half of a crab left in the restaurant, her eyes got even wider, as a mild panic set in. "We want that crab." There was no raised voice or exclamation point to end those four words, but the sense of urgency with which they were imparted caused our server to move more quickly than we were to see her do for the rest of the evening.

"You don't understand," she told me, "We live in Texas now. You can't get fresh crab in Texas." Enough said. I decided not to wonder aloud if the crab was actually local.

I sat there staring at the cold, dead crab for a minute, remembering the two pounds of crab meat that lay ignored and shivering in my freezer between the ice cream and bottle of Limoncello that had been equally forgotten. I looked back at Lindsay, who was so delighted by the sight of just a fraction of what I had taken for granted at home. I felt instantly shamed, and said as much when I offered her my share of the crab. It wasn't so much generosity as it was penance.

When I got home, I opened my freezer door to pay my respects to the crab meat. I waved at it briefly and offered it my apologies. Why had I been avoiding it? Why had I put two pounds of crab meat out of my head?

And then I understood. My expectations had been too high. When the crabs fell into my lap unexpectedly, I was excited, full of high hopes and grand plans. I wanted them to be shared in any number of fun ways with people I cared about, since one should never eat crab alone.

My crab-eating reality, however, was different from my crab-eating fantasies. I was sick with a stomach virus and working a lot. Circumstances had stacked themselves between myself and the crab. What was once alive and fresh and full of possibility wound up wrapped and thrown into a dark place to freeze over. Like so many other things.

And then, of course, I thought of the man who invited me to dinner. Our relationship was rather like the crab in my freezer-- something once regarded as a source of grand plans, the sweet meat of it hard to get at through the tough shell, but thoroughly worth the effort. A seasonal item with a very short shelf life. I'd wrapped that up tight and thrown into a dark, cold place where I didn't have to look at it along with the damned crab.

Well, I've taken the crab meat out of the freezer. It may no longer be fresh but it's still there and my feeling is that what is left should be put to good use-- it's just too precious a thing to let go to waste. Something good can and should be made of it.

It does, however, take a long time for something that cold to thaw.

Crab Rangoon

I'm not quite certain why I chose to make this dish. I could have made something fresher, something that showed off the crab a little more. I suppose I just wanted to try something a little different this time around. And it suits me. It suits me just fine.

Crab Rangoon is dish whose origins and ingredients are as fanciful as its name. I very much doubt the current military government of Myanmar (formerly catalogued as Burma by English Colonials) would ever allow such a recipe into the country. Unless, perhaps, they changed its name to Crab Yangon, tortured it a bit (it is, of course, boiled in oil), and then slapped a uniform on it after it had been sufficiently "retrained."

Nope, Crab Rangoon is a uniquely American concoction-- one that takes a little bit of this culture (wontons are Chinese), and a little bit of that one (A-1 Steak Sauce is English, cream cheese is a Northern European invention) and serves it up in a way that is universally acceptable (fried). Hopefully, none but the truly naive are fooled by the name.

There are two schools of thought relating to the genesis of Crab Rangoon. The first tells of its debut at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904-- a year the city has never since exceeded in terms of global attention or charm. The claim is dubious-- more so than the other "firsts" of the Fair, like cotton candy, peanut butter, or the hamburger. I'm willing to give them Dr. Pepper and the ice cream cone, at most.

The second, most likely story is that the dish was created in Oakland, at the original Trader Vic's. According to their website, "Trader Vic employed what was becoming the ever-present hallmark of all his food and beverage recipes: a light touch, meant to enhance but never disguise nor overpower the fine original taste of his main ingredients."

Given that this is a fried dish with cream cheese and, according to the original Trader Vic's recipe, A-1 Steak Sauce and garlic salt, that's about as colorful as one of the one-legged Vic's legendary tall tales.

Fortunately, the dish is much easier to swallow than his stories.

This is an adapted, non-traditional recipe. I figured if Vic could come up with a "Polynesian recipe" and name it for a city nowhere near Polynesia, I could take a few liberties, too.

Makes about 30 pieces.

Ingredients:

1/2 pound fresh crab meat, preferably, but canned crab meat may certainly be substituted.

1/3 pound cream cheese at room temperature

4 tablespoons of finely chopped red onion, more or less according to your own tastes

1/2 teaspoon finely chopped garlic

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1 tablespoon or more of chopped cilantro

a few dashes of Worcestershire Sauce

as many wonton wrappers as you can fill

1 egg yolk, well beaten with a teaspoon of water

vegetable oil, for frying

Preparation:

1. Combine crab meat with cream cheese, onion, garlic, salt, Worcestershire sauce, and cilantro. I find mixing the ingredients with clean hands to be immensely satisfying. Refrigerate if not using immediately.

2. Heat at frying oil to 375 F. Give yourself some room-- do not stint on pot size and make sure the oil is at least three inches deep. Pre-heat oven to 200 F and line a baking sheet with paper towels for future oil drainage.

3. Working four wonton wrappers at a time, lightly moisten (sigh) the edges of the wrappers with egg yolk. Place a heaping teaspoonful of crab mixture in the center of each. To shape into blossoms, seal each corner together and gather in the middle like so:

If a little bit of crab peaks out from the top, as illustrated above, don't worry-- they won't come apart. Pinch and twist the corners, making certain that you are making flowers and not swastikas. This is important.

4. Fry the wontons. You may do this in batches if you like or one at a time, since the frying time is fairly quick-- about 45 seconds, depending upon the true heat of the oil. The dual goal is to get the wrappers to a crisp, bubbly brown and to heat the filling through. The filling does not need to be horrendously molten. Place each wonton on the towel-lined baking sheet to drain. When frying has been completed, place your newly-born Crab Rangoon into the oven to keep warm.

Best served immediately. And not piping hot, unless you actually are trying to give your guests mouth burns.

Serve with Chinese mustard, Red Pepper sauce like Sriracha, or fish sauce. Whatever you like. It's your Crab Rangoon, make it work for you.

Early this week, I received a rather frantic phone call from a friend of mine.

"Hi, I know I only call you when I need a favor...", she said, which is entirely untrue.

"Do you know anyone who'd want a case of live crabs? Like, right now?" I was hoping she meant food-grade crabs. Not pthius pubis.

"I was going to send a case of Dungeness crabs to the East Coast, but that's not happening anymore and I'm... well... I'm not going to touch them."

I told her I didn't know anyone off hand who would want them, but that I would post an alert on my Facebook page, since I've got at least a good 50 food freaks on my friends list who always seem to be online.

I hung up the phone.

And then I thought about it for a moment. Why would a food person (me) who loves crab, turn down a free case of them? Oh, because he's a fool. And he was in the middle of enjoying a week-long battle with a stomach virus that had limited his food intake to baby food: bananas, crackers, rice, and Pedialyte.

I called her back about 90 seconds later to tell her I would be happy to take them off her hands, virus be damned. Besides, I had never experienced a crab boil. I thought it might be interesting.

When I lugged the case up the two flights of stairs to my apartment, I placed the box on my counter and stared at it for a long while before doing anything. How many crabs were there? How big were they? Would they be angry with me? Were they still alive?

I cut open the straps with the same scissors I would eventually use to cut open the crabs' bodies and, feeling somewhat self-conscious of that fact, I quietly hid them out of sight before confronting the crabs themselves. Inside the box, I found a wriggling mass of wet newspaper and Koolit refrigerant packages, not, as I had hoped, a nest of local seaweed, which I would have considered much more appealing to the poor creatures.

I counted them as I peeled away the newspaper. Eight. Eight really large Dungeness crabs. Upon further examination, I noted that two were missing their front claws, another two had a broken, dangling hind leg, and one poor fellow had had his eye poked out. These were not A-list crustaceans. I re-covered them, placed them in the refrigerator, and said, almost inaudibly, "Goodnight, crabs. Sleep well, for I shall most likely kill you in the morning."

And Then There Were Seven

When I woke the next morning, I pulled the box out of the fridge, set a large pot of salted water to boil, and examined my soon-to-be-cooked-alive friends. They barely stirred. My refrigerator, I thought, was too cold. I pulled them all out of the box and took a closer look. The littlest one which had, either by chance of packing or crab-imposed hierarchy, been found at the bottom of the pile, dead. I gave it a little nod and gently placed it in the garbage.

While waiting for the water to come to a rolling boil, I watched the seven surviving crabs slowly come to life, which seemed a waste of energy, given the fact that I was about to kill them in a matter of minutes. Still, it provided a bit of mild entertainment.

When the time came to boil the crabs, I realized it had been a very long time since I'd actively killed another living creature larger than an insect. I consoled myself with the realization that crabs are, in fact, tenuously related to insects. The classes Insecta and Crustacea are both members of Phylum Arthropoda, right? Armed with the theory that I was merely killing giant sea bugs, I set to work with an eased conscience. I very much doubt the crabs shared my opinion.

The killing was swift, but not the process. Two crabs per pot, boiling for approximately 10 minutes. One pot + seven crabs = forty minutes of standing around by myself, trying not to think about what I was doing.

My mind wandered to the other, far less pleasant to have, yet likely much-more-enjoyable-to-get, crabs.

A Brief Aside

When travelling the world in his younger days, a good friend of mine picked up a case of pthius pubis somewhere in Germany, which is, if you weren't aware, a country in Europe that is, ironically, noted for its cleanliness. Not speaking the language, but in great discomfort, my friend marched into a chemist's shop, took out a pen and paper, and proceeded to create a delightfully simple pictogram-- something very similar to this:

He pointed to the drawing of the crab, then pointed to himself. He was immediately given the necessary materials for proper treatment.

I have always admired my friend's straightforward communication skills. He has since come to make a good living off them.

When the slaughter was over, I was faced with seven big, orange-red, steaming crab carcasses. Now what? Now nothing. I placed the crabs on a tray and shoved them back into the refrigerator, where they would no longer complain about the temperature. I had work to do. I had a therapy appointment at which I proceeded to discuss the fact that I had just taken the lives of seven fellow creatures.

Upon my return, I set to work upon the crabs. Slowly at first, being rather inexperienced in the exercise of extricating edible meat from crustaceans. The scissors came out of hiding, as did a pair of pliers, and a hammer. The hammer made a splattering mess when used, the pliers suffered from a chronic case of lockjaw, and I was remarkably, irritatingly frustrated.

What the hell was I doing? Standing alone in my kitchen, I felt absurd cleaning the meat out of these damned crabs, but I was committed. I had a certain obligation to these creatures to see that their flesh was put to good use.

I have always thought that a crab boil was a social event, not one designed for a single man with a stomach virus standing alone over his sink. No beer, no butter, or Thai seafood sauce. Just a guy in an apron and a pair of cargo shorts with crab matter all over his hands, forearms, and apron front.

I was determined that, when I felt better, I would go to town with the two pounds of crab meat I now had before me. Crab cakes, crab and corn chowder, crab salad, crab ice cream. Whatever it took to use it all up. It needed to be shared, not consumed in solitude.

I placed the crab in a gallon-sized Ziploc bag, removed as much air as possible, double-wrapped the bag in heavy duty aluminum foil, and placed it gently in my freezer, where it sits awaiting better times.

I look forward to a day in the near future when I can share it with my friends. But how? In my little apartment, a full-fledged dinner party is out of the question. But small gatherings with cocktails and nibbles are ideal. Shall I make tiki drinks to serve with a Crab Rangoon? Deviled Crab with dainty glasses of fino? Or a much more plebeian and fitting-for-the-times crab cakes and ice cold beer?

Whatever I decide, one thing is for certain. I'm going to share my crabs, and share them with people I love. They'll thank me for it, I just know they will.

Bay Area

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