Burgundy and a whole lot of crabs

A couple weeks ago, we went to a burgundy dinner at Antica Posta that Cellar 13 hosted. The first burgundy dinner we went to was also with JAO Imports, but it was at Woodfire Grill, and it was divine. That last dinner really opened our eyes to a lot of good French wine and we've been working on our collection of burgundies since then.

This dinner was just as good but I was more careful about how much I was drinking since it fell on a school night. Among the things on the menu were grilled octopus, seared foie gras with a vin santo reduction (yum), swordfish, and this veal cheek on the right. It was braised so it was so tender and flavorful, and it also was unctuous and a little gelatinous, which is something that I really love about braised meat. Josh loved it too.

I've been wanting to make my own cheeks (beef or veal) but it's surprisingly hard to get. I've asked Greg at Heritage Farms to save some for me. I may need to remind him.

It was my birthday and Josh got Maryland blue crabs shipped in from The Crab Place (thecrabplace.com). He ordered a half bushel, which is about 3 dozen crabs, but since they didn't have the size he ordered (jumbo female), they covered by adding more crabs. So we ended up with 56 crabs altogether. 56!!!

So I packed up all the crabs into freezer bags and put some in the freezer and some in the fridge. I had lots of delicious steamed crabs. These Maryland crabs come chock full of roe and mustard, just like I grew up with. I really don't understand why the crabs at the stores here are so pathetic, even the females.

At the recommendation of a friend who said that whole crabs don't freeze well, I intended to pick the crabs and freeze the crabmeat. But I tried it with a cold crab and learned two things. One, hot crabs are easier to pick and two, it is not worth it to pick crabs for meat. So I saved the meat (and other goodies) from that one crab that took me like an hour and froze the rest of the whole crabs.

We watched Curtis Stone make a curried chili crab recipe on Food Network but we were missing a lot of ingredients, so I couldn't make it. At the last second, I decided to make crabs with black beans with a recipe from The Crab Place, of all places!

The recipe included the crabs, chopped into sections, scallions, ginger, garlic, and fermented black beans. Then you add the crabs and then some chicken stock, cover, and let it cook. Since the crabs were already steamed, I shortened the cooking time but not enough. It was a bit overcooked. Josh liked the dish and I thought it was okay, but definitely couldn't compare with what we have at the restaurant.

When I was in my "we should bring lunch" phase, I roasted chicken breasts (Ina Garten) and served it with a garlic, parsley, shallot, chicken fat sauce (Jacques Pepin). That sounded like a nice idea. So I picked up skin-on chicken breasts on the bone and roasted them in the toaster oven. Love that toaster oven. Then I sauteed up a generous amount of the sauce, adding extra evoo to extend it. Then I took the chicken breasts off the bone, pulling off all the extra meat, and put it all into the fridge.

And then on Wednesday, we had an easy dinner. Josh pulled the chicken and sauce out of the fridge when he got home so that they would be room temp. When I got home, I washed some red leaf lettuce that I had bought originally for korean bbq. It help up surprisingly well. I made a very mustardy vinaigrette (as Jacques says he likes) and tossed it through. It was a very simple, fast, and delicious dinner.

Thursday was another night where we got home kind of late so Josh had asked if we should have the bolognese ragu that I had made a batch of on Sunday, intended for the freezer. But I had run short of tomato paste so the sauce was even more lacking than usual and I didn't have time to go to the store. Simmering it with tomatoes would take a long time, so I opted for something else.

I started off with my own butter (we are moving pretty well through it this time around) and six cloves of smashed garlic. There was a quarter white onion in the fridge, so I chopped that pretty finely and in it went. As it browned (a bit too much, really), I added in a handful of parsley and let the whole thing meld together. While the pasta water came back to a boil, I saw the little sad bowl of picked crab meat and tossed that in too, breaking up the bigger bits.

I gradually ladled in pasta water to give the sauce some actual sauciness and also some salt and body. As it thickened, I cooked the pasta. I undercook my pasta these days, putting it into the sauce to cook the last two minutes. So I did that and topped it off with a very generous amount of grated parmigiano reggiano. After it was in the bowls, more parmigiano reggiano.

A very delicious dinner. And simple, even if it did take longer to prepare than I expected.