cracked crab with three sauces

I am currently knee deep in boxes and bubble wrap. On Monday, Beau and I signed a stack of papers that was at least two inches thick, which made this whole house buying business feel awfully real. The keys to our little bungalow will be in our hands tomorrow.

As you can imagine, I haven’t had much time to cook. Beau and I have been subsisting on scrambled eggs with whatever vegetables we have rolling around in the fridge and a couple tablespoons of Boursin thrown in. On a side note: If you’re going to eat the same meal over and over again, I highly recommend this one. Scrambled eggs with Boursin is pretty sexy, even if it only takes five minutes to make!

So, as I was saying, packing and paper-signing and calling movers and selling a ton of crap because our new house is smaller than this one hasn’t left me a ton of time to cook. But tomorrow is New Year’s Eve and I couldn’t imagine leaving you without a recipe for ringing in the new year!

May I propose the Cracked Crab Supper. This is our annual Christmas Eve meal, but it would make an equally fine New Year’s Eve spread. I look forward to cracked crab all year. We cover the table in newspaper, boil up a huge pot of Dungeness and serve a variety of sauces alongside. Everyone gets a crab cracker and a pick. Plates are strictly forbidden. After the meal, we roll the whole glorious mess into the newspaper and trot it out to the compost. Done and done. (Did I mention I love this supper?)

Fresh Dungeness bathed in melted butter feels quite luxurious. There’s also something about having permission to eat with your hands that feels  just a little bit naughty. Throw in a bottle (or ten) of champagne and you have the perfect meal for a New Year’s Eve gathering!

I wish you all a delicious end to 2015. And I look forward to writing you next from a new house and a new year!

xo,

Olaiya

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Cracked Crab with Three Sauces

• 6 Dungeness crab, 2-2 ½ lbs each
• 1 recipe Sauce Verte (see below)
• 1 recipe Spicy Smoked Paprika Aioli (see below))
• 1 recipe Drawn Butter (see below)
• 2 lemons, cut into wedges
• Several pounds of ice

*Notes: For everything you ever wanted to know about cooking and cleaning Dungeness crab, I refer you to my friend Becky’s excellent tutorial. She is a fantastic chef and knows pretty much everything there is to know about sustainable seafood. 

– If you would rather not cook live crab, you might be able to sweet talk your fishmonger into killing and cleaning it for you in the shop. Take it home and cook it immediately as the meat deteriorates quickly. Of course, you can always buy pre-cooked and cleaned crab from the store, but it’s never as delicious as freshly-cooked. 

– Some people serve whole crab and have their guests clean them at the table. I find this a little off-putting (read: gross) for those who are not die-hard crab lovers and seafood aficionados. I prefer to clean the crab and remove the innards before serving.

– The crab can be cooked up to 6 hours in advance. Store in the refrigerator until you’re ready to serve it.

Heat a large pot of generously salted water over high heat. If you do not have an extremely large pot, you will need to cook the crab in batches.

While the water is heating, fill a large bowl or pot (or a clean sink) with ice. If you are cooking the crab in batches, be sure to save some of the ice for the rest of the crab.

When the water comes to the boil, place as many crab as will fit in the pot. Be sure they are completely submerged. Bring back to the boil and cook for 15 minutes. Transfer the crab to the ice and cover with cold water. This will stop the cooking. Once completely cold, remove the crab from the ice water. Clean the crabs if you didn’t have your fishmonger do it. Dry thoroughly and store in the refrigerator if not serving immediately. 

If you want to eat your crab cold (like we do), just take it out of the fridge about 20-30 minutes before you plan to serve it to let it warm up a bit. 

If you want to eat it hot, steam the crab for 5-10 minutes just before serving. The time will vary depending on how large your crabs are and how cold they are when they go in the pot. Taste the meat often as you steam the crab to be sure you don’t overcook it.

Serve crab accompanied by sauces and lemon wedges.

Serves 6-8.

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Sauce Verte

• 1 cup parsley, chopped fine 
• 1/2 teaspoon thyme, chopped fine
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped chives
• 1 small clove garlic, minced
• ¾ cup olive oil
• 1 tablespoon capers, chopped
• 2 ½ tablespoons lemon juice
• Salt, to taste

Combine all the ingredients in a small bowl and stir to combine. Adjust seasonings to taste. Transfer to small bowls and serve alongside the crab. This sauce doesn’t hold particularly well, so I recommend making it no more than an hour or two before you intend to serve it. 

Makes about 1 cup.

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Spicy Smoked Paprika Aioli

• 1 cup mayonnaise, preferably homemade
• 2 garlic cloves, grated on a microplane or minced
• 1 -3 teaspoons lemon juice, depending on whether your mayo already has lemon or vinegar in it
• ¾ teaspoon smoked paprika
• ¼ teaspoon cayenne, or to taste
• Pinch fine grain sea salt

Combine all the ingredients in a small bowl and whisk to combine. Adjust seasonings to taste. Transfer to small bowls and serve alongside the crab. This aioli can be made up to 2 days in advance and will get spicier as it sits. Store, covered, in the refrigerator.

Makes about 1 cup.

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Drawn Butter

• 8 oz (2 sticks) high quality salted butter 

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Once melted, the butter will foam. Skim the foam then pour the butter into a clear heatproof container like a Pyrex measuring cup. Wait for the milk solids to fall to the bottom then carefully pour off the liquid butter, leaving the solids behind. You can use cheesecloth if you want your drawn butter to be extra clear. I usually don’t fuss with the extra step since it wastes some of the butter. Heat the drawn butter in a small saucepan just before serving. Transfer to small serving bowls and serve alongside the crab.

Makes about ¾ cup.

Matcha White Chocolate Bark with Coconut and Raspberries

I’ve got big news this week. Beau and I are buying a house!!!!!!!!!

Those of you who have purchased houses before probably know how nerve-racking this process is. I had no inkling of the mountain of paperwork buying a house entails, not to mention the nail-biting stress induced by waiting to see if your bid is accepted. And then there’s that whole forking over a huge pile of money part, too. 

But, home-ownership! How exciting is that? I can barely sleep at night, I’m so jazzed to start painting and refinishing and laying tile. And my index finger is practically paralyzed from all the decor-related pinning I’ve been doing. 

All this stress and excitement has left me more than a little behind on my Christmas preparations, however. As in I have done precisely nothing to prepare for the holidays. I haven’t even played any sappy Christmas music, which is my favorite way to kick off the season.

But thanks to this recipe for Matcha White Chocolate Bark with Coconut and Raspberries, I will at the very least have some pretty homemade treats to give. 

This bark is inspired by a green tea bar made by the L.A.-based chocolate company, Compartés. The recent appearance of many excellent white chocolates on the market had already made me a white chocolate convert. But the sweet, grassy flavor and pleasant bitterness of matcha powder against the silky sweetness of white chocolate made me consider it in a whole new, more sophisticated, light. 

One of my go-to gifts for the holidays is chocolate bark. It’s stupendously easy to make and the possible flavor combinations are limitless. This bark is my favorite to date though. I’m obsessed with the green tea/white chocolate combination. The raspberries provide contrast to the earthiness of the tea and the sweetness of the chocolate. And the coconut gives the whole thing crunch. 

I’m feeling pretty nice about the whole Christmas color palette, too. And did I mention this gorgeous confection only takes about 15 minutes to make? 

So if you’re looking for a last-minute homemade holiday gift or just a little something different to slip in someone’s stocking, I suggest you get acquainted with this Matcha White Chocolate Bark. 

I’ve made two batches today, which might be the extent of my holiday “baking” this year. But I’m cool with it. Especially if it means decking the halls of our own little bungalow come Christmas 2016.

P.S. If you’re looking for other homemade holiday gift ideas, here are a few more recipes you might like:

• Apple-Rosemary Granola 
• Lebkuchen 
• Vanilla-Chestnut Jam 
• Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies with Pistachio and Black Sesame 
• Orange-Hazelnut Bundt Cake with Rum Glaze.

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Matcha White Chocolate Bark with Coconut and Raspberries

• 1 lb. high quality white chocolate, finely chopped
• 3 tablespoons culinary grade matcha powder
• ½ cup freeze-dried raspberries, lightly crushed
• ⅓ cup unsweetened, shaved coconut

*Notes: I used Green & Black’s organic white chocolate for this bark but any high-quality white chocolate will work.

– Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods both carry excellent freeze-dried raspberries.

– Unsweetened coconut is important since white chocolate is generally quite sweet. Using sweetened coconut would, in my opinion, push this bark into cloying territory.

– The chocolate is gently heated to between 100 – 110° F in order to keep the temper of the chocolate. Reserving 1/4 of the chocolate to stir in will cool it down more quickly and also help keep it in temper. Once your chocolate it is out of temper it gets a whitish sort of “bloom” more quickly and will lose some of it’s snap. Of course, it isn’t strictly necessary to try to keep your chocolate in temper. For a slightly less fussy version, you can simply heat it all until melted and then proceed with the recipe. This option works better if you or the recipients of your bark are going to be eating it within a 2-4 days.

Heat a small saucepan with one inch of water over high heat until the water barely comes to a simmer. Reduce heat to maintain this bare simmer. Place a large metal bowl over the saucepan of water and add ¾ of the chopped chocolate. Take care not to let any water or steam touch the chocolate or it can seize. 

Cook, stirring often until the chocolate has melted and reads between 100 – 110° F on an instant-read thermometer. Remove the bowl from the heat and add the reserved chocolate. Stir until all the chocolate has melted. Sift the matcha over the bowl to make sure there are no lumps and stir until the streaks disappear and the chocolate is uniform in color.

Stir half the raspberries and half the coconut into the melted chocolate then pour onto a parchment-lined sheet pan. Spread the melted chocolate to a roughly 10×10-inch square then sprinkle the rest of the raspberries and coconut over the top. Gently press the toppings into the chocolate to make sure they stick.

Set the bark aside to cool for 2 hours at room temperature or 20 minutes in the fridge before slicing into 16 pieces. Serve at room temperature.

Makes 16 pieces.

brown sugar pumpkin galette with bay ice cream

Ok. I’m going to level with you guys. It’s not always easy to turn out a weekly blog post. As I’m sure you can imagine, I sometimes have zero culinary inspiration and Beau and I end up dining on chili from the hotbar at Whole Foods. Some weeks, taking the time to create, prep and shoot a recipe feels like too much. Not to mention finding something engaging to write about it. Sometimes I just don’t want to. 

This week was starting to look a lot like a just-don’t-want-to sort of week. I’ve got holiday gift classes to prepare for and I’m getting ready to launch my next culinary tour. It seems like the majority of my friends have had babies in the last month, so I have a mountain of baby gifts to get in the mail. Thursday’s Thanksgiving, which means shopping and cooking and all that jazz.  

But I’ve had this idea for a pumpkin tart floating around in my head for months. And since there is (obviously) no better moment for a pumpkin tart than the week of Thanksgiving, I figured I’d better get on it. 

Pumpkin pie has been my favorite Thanksgiving dessert since forever. Apple pie is nice. Pecan pie, delightful. But pumpkin pie, wreathed in a fluffy halo of whipped cream captured my young heart and has held sway over it ever since. For years, my go-to recipe has been this one, with the spices doubled and a little maple and rum thrown in for good measure. This is my dream pumpkin pie–velvety and rich with a complex spiciness. But I’m not so particular when it comes to pumpkin pie; I eat the samples they hand out at the grocery store with almost as much gusto. With the savory-sweetness of pumpkin, a creamy custard base and the alchemy of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, it’s pretty tough to mess up pumpkin pie.

That said, I wanted to try something different this year. A riff on the classic. Maybe a little less sweet and with the pumpkin itself playing a starring roll. So despite my just-don’t-want-to state of mind, I pulled out the ingredients for galette dough and headed to the market to select a pumpkin. The next day I queued up several episodes of This American Life and got to work. 

Somewhere around the time the disks of dough were in the refrigerator and my pumpkin was neatly peeled and seeded and sliced, I realized that this chilly Monday morning spent chopping and kneading in my warm kitchen was a pleasure and not a slog. There’s something about the methodical nature of baking that clears my head. It’s precise. And technical. You have to focus on the task at hand, which is it’s own sort of meditation. 

Baking this tart turned out to be the perfect antidote to a mounting tide of pre-holiday stress. And it’s almost as good as the ethereal pumpkin pies I remember from my childhood. 

Wishing you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving, whatever sort of pie you fancy!

xo,

Olaiya

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Brown Sugar Pumpkin Galette with Bay Ice Cream

• ½ recipe Easy Galette Dough (recipe follows)
• One small baking pumpkin (mine weighed 2 ½ lbs), halved, seeded, peeled and sliced ⅓ inch thick
• ½ vanilla bean
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• ¼ cup light brown sugar, loosely packed
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• Pinch (1/16 teaspoon) ground allspice
• Pinch (1/16 teaspoon) ground cloves
• Pinch (1/16 teaspoon) ground cinnamon
• 1 1/2 oz (3 tablespoons) butter, room temperature
• 2 teaspoons rum (optional)
• 1 tablespoon milk or cream
• 1 tablespoon sanding sugar (demerara, turbinado or even plain old granulated sugar will work, too)
• Bay Ice Cream, to serve (recipe follows)

*Note: You can use any winter squash in this recipe. You might want to add a bit more or less sugar depending on which squash you choose (butternut and acorn are sweeter, kabocha is more savory, etc.). Cook times will vary depending on the variety of squash and how thickly it’s sliced.

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a large rimmed sheet pan with parchment paper. Roll out one disk of dough on a lightly floured work surface into a ¼-inch-thick round or oval. Transfer the dough to the sheet pan.  Arrange the pumpkin over the dough, overlapping the slices slightly and leaving a 1 ½-inch border. Place the sheet pan in the freezer for 10-15 minutes. (This keeps the dough from slumping when you bake your galette.)

Use a paring knife to halve the vanilla bean and scrape the seeds out. Place the vanilla seeds in a small bowl with the granulated sugar. Use your fingers to rub the vanilla into the sugar; this will keep it from clumping. Transfer the vanilla sugar to a medium bowl and add the brown sugar, salt and spices. Whisk to combine then rub the butter and rum into the sugar mixture. 

Remove the galette from the freezer. Crumble the brown sugar mixture over the sliced pumpkin. Fold the dough over the pumpkin and lightly brush the edges of the galette with milk or cream. then sprinkle with the sanding sugar. Bake, rotating the galette as necessary for even browning, until the crust is golden brown and the pumpkin is cooked through, about 60 minutes. Cool slightly before slicing and serving with Bay Ice Cream.

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Easy  Galette Dough

• 13 oz (3 cups) all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 ½ teaspoons salt
• 9 oz (2 ¼ sticks) chilled, unsalted butter, cut into ½ inch cubes
• 8 tablespoons (or more) ice water
• 1 ½ teaspoons apple cider vinegar

 
*Notes: I love, love, LOVE this dough. The food processor does most of the work and it comes together in no time. It is also very forgiving, which makes it a great dough for novice bakers. Unlike my flaky pie dough, which requires a bit more work, this is a tender dough–more like a pâte sablé. If you’d like a flakier crust on your galette, feel free to substitute this dough recipe.

– This dough can be refrigerated for up to 2 days or placed in a air-tight plastic bag and frozen for up to 2 months. If frozen, thaw the dough in the refrigerator overnight and soften slightly at room temperature before rolling out.

Blend the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor to combine. Add the butter, processing between each addition using on/off turns, until the dough looks like coarse meal. Gradually add the ice water and cider vinegar and process until the dough just comes together. You may need to add more ice water by teaspoonfuls if the dough is dry.  

Turn the dough out onto a large work surface and gather it together into a ball. Do not knead or you risk toughening the dough. Divide the dough in half with a bench scraper or knife. Form each half into a ball and then flatten each ball into a disk about 1 inch thick. Wrap each disk in plastic wrap and chill for at least an hour before rolling. 
 
Makes 2 disks of dough (enough for 2 galettes).

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Bay Ice Cream

• 1 3/4 cups heavy cream
• 10 black peppercorns (whole)
• 6 Turkish bay leaves (fresh or dried)
• 1 cup whole milk
• 3/4 cup granulated white sugar, divided
• Pinch fine grain sea salt
• 4 large egg yolks

*Note: This ice cream will keep for up to a week, though the texture is best on days 1-3. After that it can get a little grainy, especially if you open and close your freezer a lot. 

Place the cream and peppercorns in a medium saucepan and place over medium heat. If you’re using fresh bay leaves, slice each into 4 or 5 pieces and add to the pot. If you are using dried bay, crush the leaves a little before adding them to the pot. When the cream comes to a bare simmer, remove the pot from the heat, cover and set aside to steep for 40 minutes. When the cream has infused, pour it through a fine mesh sieve into a small bowl. Discard the bay and peppercorns. 

Prepare an ice bath by filling a large mixing bowl half full of ice and then just covering the ice with cold water.

Return the strained cream to the pot along with the milk, ½ cup of the sugar and salt. Heat over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture reaches a bare simmer. Do not boil. 

Whisk the egg yolks and remaining ¼ cup sugar together in a medium bowl. Gradually warm the eggs by adding the cream mixture in a thin stream while whisking. Return the egg and cream mixture to the saucepan. Cook over medium-low, stirring constantly with a flexible heatproof spatula (be sure scrape the bottom and corners of the pan so the custard doesn’t scorch) until the mixture coats the back of spoon like this. If you’re more of a technical cook, the custard should register between 170 to 175°F on an instant-read thermometer. Do not let the custard boil or it will break and look grainy. 

Immediately strain the thickened custard through a fine-mesh sieve into a large bowl set over the ice bath and whisk to cool. Transfer the cooled custard to the fridge and chill for at least 6 hours (overnight if possible–the colder your base is, the smoother your ice cream will be). Freeze the custard in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions then transfer to an airtight container and place  in the freezer to harden, at least one hour.

Makes about 1 quart.