Sauce Boss Thoughts

Stone crab season is well underway here on the Gulf Coast of Florida! They are an amazing treat. I call them a treat for a good reason- when the price starts at around $20 per pound for raw claws from the fish fellas, that can really add up. If you have them at a restaurant, expect to pay even more! To enjoy the season’s bounty and still have beer money left over, we have to come up with some creative ways to stretch. How can we get the delicious seafood taste in a satisfying main course?

History Lesson

Ancient people had to work hard for their protein. You can only kill so much dinner with sticks and rocks, so we learned to incorporate the meat with the more readily available plants. During the Great Depression, cheap ingredients such as penny crackers, dried pasta and flour were mixed with small amounts of more expensive ingredients like eggs (one egg can serve as a binder for a whole recipe), bologna (Spam anyone?) and dried beef (SOS) to feed the large family. In the Italian neighborhood, a pound of pasta and a pot of sauce could feed a large family on a very modest budget. If you visit Italy, there will be different sauces in different regions- the difference is the availability of ingredients. Italians living in the mountainous north eat a lot of potatoes while southern Italians and Sicilians eat more citrus and fish. Use what you’ve got and stretch it, and what I’ve got is a pound of medium stone crab claws.

I’ve spent 20 years in a Sicilian family as the wife of the only son. I can make sauce. But make your life easy, folks. Grab 2 jars of premade sauce and jazz it up. For this purpose, choose a sauce with a smooth consistency or alternatively hit it with a stick blender halfway through cooking. Mince a few cloves of garlic and dice some onion. Add this to a large pot over medium heat. Add some olive oil to the pan. As the oil warms, add the garlic and onion and melt them down. Add a little salt so they release their liquids and stir frequently until they are soft. Next, add that jarred sauce with some water and stir. Bring this to a simmer, cover and let it bubble gently for two hours or so, stirring occasionally to ensure nothing sticks to the bottom and adjusting the heat so that its not boiling vigorously. We are looking for a gentle simmer here. Your house should be starting to smell amazing right about now!

Next, grab your raw claws and rinse them clean with cool water. In order to be able to eat these without splashing sauce on everything in sight, we’re going to need to crack these claws. With a claw on the cutting board, use your mallet or rolling pin and give each claw one or two strategic whacks. The idea is to gain access to the meat while keeping it intact during the cooking process. Rinse them again to remove any broken shell before adding them to the sauce. Stir, return to a simmer, and cover. Stir and adjust the temperature regularly over the next two hours to avoid burning.

Dinner is served

To set the table, I like use newspaper as a table cloth so that once the plates are cleared at the end of the meal, you can wrap up all the mess into the newsprint and toss it.

First course: Spaghetti cooked according to package instructions. Serve with sauce, a sprinkle of cheese and crushed red pepper. Have some bread on hand to clean up your dish!

Second course (you saved room, right?): The claws aka The Fun Part. Use crackers and picks to get every tasty bit out of the shells of these bad boys. There is no way to eat this like a lady- you will be up to your elbows in sauce. The sweet seafood taste will make you forget all about the dishes and laundry that await you.

Third course: Italians eat their salad at the end of the meal. A simple mix of greens with olive oil and balsamic vinegar will do.

Wine: There’s plenty of sweetness in the crab, so a crisp, dry Chardonnay would be my choice.