Last night my husband treated me to a delicious dinner. Our local market is having a three-day seafood sale and, being a Rhode Islander, he bounced over to check it out. He came back, not with the shrimp I'd requested, but with a crab and a lobster tail. He'd decided to try something new, though he's previously had both before. Anyway, he looked up how to cook crab online and then when we got home he stuck the lobster in the fridge and rolled up his sleeves. I, meanwhile, poked my head into the fridge and investigated the crab.
This was the first time I'd seen a crab up close and, well, not on TV. I was rather intrigued.
At first, it was kinda scary looking. And it smelled.....salty. It also, surprisingly, had soggy fur on it. Around the "face" part of the crab and behind and between its legs. The fur had the smooth constancy of very wet short dog hair.
I kept poking and playing with it while the water boiled. Like a small child, I discovered the legs wriggled around and made a fun clicking/clacking sound as they banged into each other and the hard upper shell when I gently shook the creature.
I finally set it down, but I kept poking it and watching it, making sure it wouldn't get up and walk away.
The shell was very interesting; a lovely reddish-orange color. My husband wants to clean it out and use it for something. I have my suspicions about this most recent idea of his.
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Anyway, when the water was ready he plopped it in the pot.
We looked at it for a minute and decided to flip the crab over. As it cooked, little air bubbles popped out of it. It was very interesting.
About ten or fifteen minutes later when it was done, my husband took it out and rinsed it as he popped off the shell and the tail thing {not pictured}. By then I was wrapped up in a book and didn't realize what he was up to till he started saying, "Ew, yucky." Lots of "mysterious crab goo" was the cause for his comments as he washed his hands. I took a picture and then grabbed a bunch of paper towels to clean up the goo, cause I knew he probably wouldn't do it till after the meal - if he actually did it that night.
Deprived of its hard shell, the crab was easily broken in half by my husband.
And then swiftly transferred to the plates. Since it was finger food, I grabbed some more paper towels before we sat down to our meal. I watched my husband break off one of the legs and open it up to get at the meat inside before I cautiously followed his example. The crab meat was delicious! All this time and I had no idea what I was missing out on! Plus, being me, I had a lot of fun with the hands-on task of breaking things to get my food. I had a lot of fun and there was surprisingly quite a lot of meat on the crab to fill us up.
It was so yummy.
