An afternoon spent picking crabs

For my birthday, Josh ordered me a pile of crabs. Well, technically, it was a half bushel, something like five to six dozen Maryland blue crabs. We spent the weekend eating crabs in all sorts of ways. I had intended to pick the crabs that weekend, but I attempted it on cold crabs, and it was horrible.

I froze many of the crabs, but they started to really take up too much and dangerous (pointy!) room in the freezer. So with the intent to pick as many as I could (which I gauged to be about 18 crabs which was what was in the chest freezer), I set up the steamer. Then I steamed them in batches and set to pickin' 'em. It probably took three to four hours or maybe more.

I ended up with a huge bowl of picked meat with nearly as much crab meat as roe and mustard. I intended just to vacuum seal and freeze it. Josh said it would be wrong to not take advantage of so much fresh crab meat. So I decided to make she-crab soup.

For someone who loves crab and soup as much as I do, I was surprisingly low on she-crab soup recipes. I searched through all the soup books and all the crab books. I searched through all my Southern books. I searched online. Many of the recipes followed the same trend, but at the time, I was missing two key ingredients for all the best recipes: milk and sherry.

Josh ran out to the store and I chose my recipe: one from Hugh Acheson's new A New Turn in the South. It was one of the more complex ones, calling for a mixture of vegetables, but it sounded good.

So I put it all together (about half the written recipe) and added in a fat cup of the meat and roe. I didn't adjust cooking time based on halving the recipe. It was looking really good, but then after I added the crab, it thickened up too much. It seemed to separate a little bit and maybe start to scorch.

I served it as it was and we added in some sherry. It was good, but not excellent. Not worthy of the same she-crab soup I had in Charleston.

I vacuumed sealed the remaining crab meat -- something like three to four cups -- and froze it. Still have another dozen or so crabs in the freezer.

You can't live on she-crab soup alone. But what else to make? We had some leftover "French" baguette and a pretty McMullan tomato. I chopped up the tomato, added basil, and salt. I grilled the bread slices, then rubbed them with the cut side of a garlic clove.

I lightly oiled the baguette with Arbequina evoo and piled the mixture on top. (It ended up a little light on the salt, but when I added it, it definitely perked up a bit.) Very tasty.