Crab Information

Photo: flickr user The U.S. National Archives

Ingredients

IT'S TIME TO GET CRACKING IF YOU WANT TO ENJOY TASTIEST CRAB OF SEASON - BY

Preparation

Let Maine boast of lobsters, Florida of stone crabs, Louisiana of crawfish.

Northern California has Dungeness crab, a celebrated crustacean that rivals them all.

Plucked straight from the Pacific, cooked, cleaned and cracked within hours, Dungeness crab is one of the region's greatest contributions to good eating.

Long before Northern California became a culinary mecca, food lovers reveled in the meaty Dungeness with its sweet, moist flesh and briny tang.

Now is the time to savor this hard-shelled gift from the sea. Although the Northern California season legally runs from mid-November to June, the commercial supply starts tapering off later this month, when the catch dwindles and crabbers begin shifting their sights to other species. Even though the crabbers' strike in the first weeks of this season pushed prices up, the best buys - and the freshest crab - should be available about now.

Of course, you can get Dungeness nearly year-round now, but it's worth waiting for the local season to get the sweetest crab.

The crab, which gets its name from a small fishing village on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, is found from Alaska to Santa Barbara. Alaska opens its season first, in the summer. Washington and Oregon follow. California, where Dungeness was a $13.5 million industry in 2000, is the last.

During the earlier seasons, fresh crabs are flown in from the north. But those imported crabs are never quite as tasty. And frozen crab is hardly worth considering.

Michael Sabella, whose great-grandfather began fishing out of San Francisco in the late 1880s, grew up eating crab and working in his family's Fisherman's Wharf restaurant. He contends that local crab is the best because it's hauled in by small day boats, which must return every day from fishing the frigid waters off the Farallon Islands.

'They're fresher, they're more alive' said Sabella, who owns Sabella's Italian Market and delicatessen on West Portal Avenue in San Francisco.

'Some people tank them and feed them,' he noted, 'but then you lose all the wildness of the crab.'

When crab is that fresh and sweet, there's only one way to eat it: right out of the shell. No crab Louis, crab cakes or even cioppino for me when local Dungeness is in the market. I see no point in diluting the extraordinary flavor of fresh crab with other ingredients.

Besides, with the price of Dungeness running from $8 to $12 a crab (or $3.99 to $5.99 per pound) at supermarkets, who wants to offer competition to the sweet, tender meat?

For an unparalleled feast, I just spread the table with newspapers to catch all the drips and flying shells and then pile freshly boiled crabs in the middle. One crab for every two people is about right unless you're famished.

Armed with a slender fork to tease the last morsel of meat out of the claws, I'm in heaven.

A squeeze of lemon is a nice accompaniment, but the traditional melted butter is too close to the buttery richness of the crab for me. I'm a convert to the tangy, slightly acid Asian-style dipping sauces recommended by a friend who's obsessed with crab.

A big round loaf of sourdough and a bottle of dry riesling complete the meal.

A green salad is nice, but not essential.

Purists get their crabs alive so they can cook, clean and crack them at home.

I understand the impulse, but it makes me queasy. I'd probably be a vegetarian if I had to confront all my meals eye to eye. So I usually get my crab freshly cooked from a reliable fishmonger.

If you're feeling especially self-indulgent, you might consider Sabella's garlic roasted crab. He gives the naked crab a generous cloak of butter and a bit of a kick from garlic and Pernod. The recipe is fairly simple, and gives the crab star billing. To make it easier, I ask my fishmonger to blanch and clean the crab for me.

Still, some people feel incomplete as cooks if they haven't done something to dress up their food. For these people, there are crab cakes.

We offer here a tried-and-true version of crab cakes for those who must mess with their ingredients. Unlike many such recipes, this one is more crab than filler and the cakes come out crunchy on the outside and moist inside.

However you eat your Dungeness, do it soon, before local crabs no longer can be found in the market. You can't really call yourself a Northern Californian until you've experienced the region's revered shellfish.