Summer means Dungie-eating season!

It has been super sunny in Juneau which means two things: little work is actually being accomplished and lots of fish and crabs are being caught! One of my favorite recipes I learned last year is

Pasta with Vodka Crab Sauce

This is so easy and amazingly addictive. I start by wrangling my ingredients:

Pasta - I like penne with this, but I'm sure any will do
1 cup Dungeness crab meat (or more!)
1 jar vodka sauce, or make your own
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 roma tomato, diced
Parmesan cheese for topping

(the wine in your Snow Crab Love mug is optional)

First I get my pasta going: bring salted water to boil and throw the pasta in!

Next I like to saute the garlic in about 1 tablespoon of oil over medium heat. Once it gets nice and translucent, I add the vodka sauce.

I wait to throw my crab meat and diced tomato in until the very end because I don't want the crab meat to get over cooked and the fresh tomato gives a nice contrast to the smooth sauce. What I like to do is drain the pasta once it's cooked, add the crab and tomato to the sauce, then toss the pasta in the sauce.

I serve the pasta immediately and like to top it with a healthy amount of Parmesan cheese. I have yet to snap a photo before eating it, but it looks something like this:

(from here)

Try it out and let me know what you think! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Change it up and make it your own:

I use a vodka sauce most of the time, but I've also tried this with a sun-dried tomato alfredo sauce which was super tasty!

Have you ever had garlic scapes? Holy buckets, my friends, they're good! I sliced up a couple scapes similar to the way you might cut up scallions and threw those into a batch instead of my minced garlic. The result was a mild garlic flavor with a fun fresh crunch that really livened up my pasta.

Do I think this would be great with cheese tortellini? Yes! How about ravioli? Why not!?!

Sweet Crab Treat

My friends Rachael and Chris gave me a sweet crab-shaped cookie cutter for my birthday!

They must have known that I've been coveting a crustacean cookie cutter for quite some time, and I didn't waste any using my new toy making:

Shortbread Crabs

I used a recipe from Claire Robinson, host of 5 Ingredient Fix on the Food Network, because if there's one thing I like, it's easy recipes. And snow crabs. But 'easy recipes' is up there. The best part of this recipe is you don't actually need a cookie cutter, but if you have a crab-shaped one it makes it that much more fun.

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into chunks
1 teaspoon water

everything you'll need for the cookies and the decorations

Directions:
1. Add the flour, salt, and powdered sugar to a food processor and pulse to combine. Add in the vanilla, the butter and the 1 teaspoon of water. Pulse together just until a dough is formed. Put the dough on a sheet of plastic wrap and roll into a log, about 2 1/2 inches in diameter and 5 inches long. Tightly twist each end of the wrap in opposite directions. Chill the dough in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

I didn't have plastic wrap, so I rolled the dough in a plastic baggie

2. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. (The original instructions called for this step at the very beginning, but who needs their oven preheating for 30 minutes or more while they mix and cool their dough?)

3. If you don't have a cookie cutter, you can cut the log of dough into 1/3-inch medallions and bake them as sweet little circles on your sheet. Otherwise, roll out the dough on a clean, dry, floured surface to about 1/3-inch thickness. Bring on the cookie cutter joy, placing your crabs on a nonstick cookie sheet or a buttered baking sheet, and re-rolling the leftover dough to make more crab cookies.

I don't have a rolling pin, but a glass does just fine

my salt and pepper shakers oversaw the cutter placement

4. Bake until the edges are just light brown, about 12 to 14 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool on the cookie sheets for 5 minutes. Transfer to wire racks and cool until room temperature.

golden goodness on those chelae and dactyls

 5. The fun part: decorate your cookies! I used frosting for half and left the other half plain because my husband doesn't like frosted cookies (I know, who did I marry?!?!). The plain guys got eyes before they were baked, but the frosted guys got eyes after they were all done up in cream cheesy goodness. Notice the eyes are green because they're opilios. I used mint M&Ms and they were a hit!

frosted or not, these cookies were tasty!

This made me think of the article I had read and mentioned in my last post: would a plain crab cookie taste better than one with epibionts extra toppings? I made one to find out:

see the barnacles (frosting dots) and

leech egg cases (pumpkin seeds) on the old-shell crab? 

the verdict: he was delicious!

(you can also see my sweet goldfish

in the background, mentioned here)

what a dip!

I went to a work party and had to come up with something quick to make. I remembered seeing this on Pinterest:

veggies and dip in their own edible cup (from here)

I picked up some bread, spinach and artichoke dip (I know, I know, I should've made my own, but I spent all last night sewing Ghostbusters patches onto multiple jumpsuits), and veggies, and created this:

veggie monsters! (the eyes are celery slices)

(these were the last 2, and pardon the photo - I just used my old phone)

THEN, I realized what a disservice I did to everyone, my veggie monsters included. I could have made them be veggie crabs and use a crab dip instead! Next time I will:

- buy a baguette or 2
- make this crab dip (maybe add 4-8 oz sour cream to make it a bit creamier)
- get some carrot chips, and cut a notch out of each of them
- get some broccoli crowns, and tear them apart

and make a veggie crab!

"Yar, I'll be a hit at any party!"

Crab Chat

I had another fun opportunity to chat with fans of Deadliest Catch last week. Boy, did we cover A LOT in 2 hours! Aside from funny snow crab mating behaviors, temperature dependent reproductive cycles, and just how many babies a snow crab female can make, here's a break-down of some topics we talked about:

Do we have to worry about mercury in crabs like we do mercury in fish?

We worry about mercury in tuna, swordfish, and even salmon because they're large fish that eat other fish and bioaccumulate methylmercury. In the case of tuna and swordfish, their long lives only help to increase this accumulation. Since crabs aren't really eating much fish (they prefer clams, mussels, and worms), we don't need to worry about mercury building up in their little bodies. The US limit for mercury is 1.0 parts per million, but crabs rarely are measured over 0.4 ppm with average king crab levels at 0.09 ppm and average Tanners (potentially including both Chionoecetes bairdi and C. opilio) at 0.15 ppm (see Table 3 here). American lobsters (Homarus americanus) seem to be the only crustacean with the ability to accumulate a higher level of mercury above the US limit, but their average is still maintained around 0.31 ppm. Overall, the answer is "No", we don't have to worry too much about mercury in crabs.

Why aren't blue king crabs fished as much as red king crabs?

It's not that blue king crab are hard to get to or just in the northernmost Bering Sea and Russia, making them difficult to fish due to sea ice coverage; blue kings have a wide distribution like red king crabs. The reason they're not fished is because they're so rare and few in numbers. You can see the density of blues from the National Marine Fisheris Service summer 2011 survey in the draft report here (go to page 53).

blue's range in yellow: you can see them in Southeast Alaska,
by the Pribs and St. Matt's, and near Norton Sound

What's Sig Hansen's crab dip recipe?

Oh man, we were talking A LOT about food! I love cooking and trying different recipes, whether they use crab or otherwise. Someone mentioned that Captain Sig has a crab dip recipe that he likes to make, and I for the life of me can't find it in the interwebs. The closest I got were these two clues:

A. "I like to just make a crab dip, just a regular spread. I bake it with cheese and bread crumbs on top. We like to watch a movie and have some crab dip." - Sig Hansen, from an interview by Hannah Sentenac

B. He apparently told a Swedish journalist (at CatchCon?) that he likes 'a hot crab dip with artichoke and a layer of cheese melted on top' - from a CatchCon recap by April MacIntyre

OK, I like the sound of the second one: gotta love bonus artichokes. I found a couple recipes, one super simple and one that reminded me of a halibut recipe I learned when I lived in Unalaska, so I'm going with the second one (found here, but modified a little):

Hot Crab and Artichoke Dip

Ingredients
1 (14 ounce) can artichoke hearts
1 cup lump crabmeat
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 cup sour cream
1 cup mayonnaise
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or to taste
bread crumbs

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Drain the artichokes, then chop them.
3. Mix with the other ingredients, transfer to an ovenproof dish.
4. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden and bubbly.

If you know the real recipe let me know, but I'm super excited to try this one out!

Are you a Star Trek fan?

One funny thing to come out of Thursday's chat was the realization that most of us were also Star Trek fans! Is there some connection between crab fishing and deep space exploration??

"My tea (Earl Grey, hot) is so much better in this

Snow Crab Love mug!" - Capt. Picard

Thank you again, F/V Seabrooke fans and Deadliest Catch fans! I had a great chat with you and look forward to any future opportunities to talk shop crab with you!

Crab Snacks

I feel a little bad for bragging about all the crab I got to eat in the last post, and I realize not everyone can get fresh crab that easily (kind of like getting crispy fresh apples in Juneau).

Show off!

To inspire crab love and crab eating, but minus the crunchy critters, here are some examples of crab-themed snacks to go with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert!

A crab apple! (we all know I love a good crab apple reference)

This red delicious fellow has half an apple, 2 (or 3) strawberries,

and some marshmallows, though I would use banana slices and

blueberries for eyes to keep it fresh and yummy!

Is it a crabwich, or a crabssant?

Either way, he can have whatever sammy filling you like,

plus rock some carrot stick legs, some cheesey eyes,

and some red pepper claws. Delicious!

Remember the little octopus-dog from this post?

Well, with a little clever cutting, you can get not only

2 octopus from one hot dog, but also 2 little crab friends!

Last but not least: a crab cupcake topper!

Those orange slice candies both delight me and

make my teeth hurt - but it's so cute!

(see this post for other crab cake toppers)

I hope you enjoy your crabby snacks! Let me know if you try any of these or if you make other crab-themed treats!

Summer Games Soup

Are you cheering on the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, India, Russia, Switzerland, Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan, or any other country that might read this blog? Is your throat sore from screaming, "Jump higher! Go faster! Stick the landing!"? Well have I got a soup for you that will soothe even the most ardent fan and leave you going for the gold... corn that is! Hey-oh!

Golden Corn and Crab Chowder

(so corny, I almost didn't write that joke)

We made this because our friend came back from a fishing job with that rare problem: too much crab and not enough fridge/freezer space. That's where we (my husband and I) bravely stepped up and said, "Don't worry. If eating Dungeness crab is a team sport, call us Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsch Jennings!"

"We freaking LOVE crabs!"

You'll need:
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 tablespoons butter

2 all-purpose potatoes, peeled and diced

2 ribs celery, chopped

1 medium yellow onion, chopped

1 small red bell pepper, seeded and diced

1 bay leaf, fresh or dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1/2 tablespoon Old Bay seasoning blend

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 - 2 cups vegetable or chicken stock or broth

2 - 4 cups whole milk

3 cups corn kernels, scraped fresh from the cob, canned, or frozen
8 ounces cooked lump crab meat (cooking tips here)

crabs. boom.

Directions:
1. Heat a deep pot over medium heat. Add oil and butter. As you chop your veggies, add them to the pot: potatoes, celery, onion, and red bell pepper (this helps even out the cooking time for the potatoes with everything else!). Add a bay leaf to the pot. Season the vegetables with salt and pepper and Old Bay seasoning then saute it all for 5 minutes.

2. Sprinkle in your flour and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Stir in the broth and combine. Next comes the milk, stirring to combine. I would aim for the lower end of the broth/milk amounts since I like a thicker chowder, but I included the original measurements (2 cups broth, 4 cups milk) if you're into that.

3. Bring the soup up to a low boil. Add the GOLDEN corn (see that Olympic theme?) and crab meat and simmer for 5 minutes.

soup's on!

4. Adjust the soup seasonings (the original recipe called for a whole tablespoon of Old Bay, and that always seems too overpowering for me, but I did end up sprinkling a bit more in along with some garlic powder to taste). Ladle soup into soup bowls or bread bowls if you want to get fancy like the sourdough bowl I had in San Francisco.

look at all that goodness!

(yes, I took this out on my back porch for some natural light)

I hope you enjoy it! If I had my way, I would've doubled up the crab (eat it if you got it!), but hopefully you'll love this soup as much as I love these ladies:

London Olympics 2012

Who else is excited for the Olympics this year!?!? I love watching all the competitions, cheering for pretty much any and every athlete out there. I especially love the swim competitions and track and field since those were my sports in high school (remember the swim team picture from this post?).

In honor of the Olympics, I tried to find a London-inspired crab recipe for you all to enjoy. I'm not sure if the recipe I chose is true to London or the UK, but I do know it's from the Two Fat Ladies (who I grew up watching and just adore), so that's got to be good enough! Please enjoy this dish featuring our denizens from the deep:

Crab, Corn, and Coriander Fritters
(from the Fish and Shellfish episode)

Ingredients:
6 ears fresh sweet corn
3 ounces crab meat
1 medium onion, grated
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped
1 teaspoon ground coriander
2 cloves garlic, crushed
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 ounces flour
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Peanut oil (although I'm sure vegetable oil will do)

Directions:

1. Cut the corn kernels from the cob with a sharp knife. Mix together all the ingredients except the oil. Cover and refrigerate for at least half a day.

2. Heat a spoonful of oil in a frying pan and drop in tablespoons of the crab mixture. Fry in batches briskly until brown and flip and cook the other side. Drain the fritters on paper towels and keep warm until all are cooked.

3. Serve as soon as possible. I bet Jennifer would enjoy these with a good stout beer and Clarissa would wash them down with some tasty tea.

"Grab that crab, Clarissa!"

Waiter, there's a crab in my bivalve!

Last Crabday's shellback crab got me thinking (and hungry): how would a crab-stuffed clam taste? I'm just guessing, but I'd say AMAZING! And while I'm not about to head out and go digging for clams around here (call me Miss Cautious, but paralytic shellfish poisoning is pretty prevalent up here and kind of freaks me out), this recipe from Food Network caught my eye:

Stuffed Razor Clams with Alaskan King Crab Rice Filling

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh garlic
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh ginger
• 6 razor clams (make sure it's a real razor clam, and not a robot!)

a razor clam and its roboclam counterpart

• 1/2 cup scallions, white and green parts, sliced 1/4-inch thick
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 cup short grained sushi rice, washed, cooked and cooled, as for sushi
• 1 cup coarsely chopped Alaskan king crab meat
• 1 1/2 quarts water mixed with a pinch of sea salt and 1 sheet of nori (the original recipe calls for actual sea water mixed with a cup of bull kelp... so go crazy if you can rock that ingredient!)

Directions

Shuck, clean, and chop the razor clams. Reserve the shells and about 1 cup of the clam meat.

(image found here, with another tasty lookin' recipe)

Wash, cook, and cool the sushi rice just like you would for sushi. You'll want about 2 cups cooked rice for the stuffing.

Heat the oil in a wok over high heat. Add the garlic and ginger and stir-fry for about 2 minutes until soft. Add the chopped razor clam meat, scallions, and cilantro. Season with salt and pepper, to taste, and mix lightly. Fold the mixture into the rice with the chopped crab meat.

Divide the filling among 6 razor clam shells (I'm imagining that you'll actually have a total of 12 things since you can fill each half separately). Pour water/nori mixture into a wok fitted with a steamer. Bring the water to a boil and place the stuffed clams in the steamer. Cover the steamer and cook until heated through, about 10 minutes.

how I imagine this dish might look

(baby crab picture by Jon Felis)

Let me know how it turns out if you try this recipe, or any other crab+bivalve combo!

Are you ready for some CRAB FOOD?

Who else is excited about the Super Bowl this year? I'm a Bears fan (just like blue crabs - see here), but my Long Islander husband also roots for the Giants, so we're pretty pumped to see the Giants play the Patriots again! (For those of you who aren't so American football oriented - the Giants beat the Patriots in 2008, so this will be an exciting rematch!)

OK, enough about that. We all know the second most exciting thing about the Super Bowl is the food! (I used to think it was the commercials, but they've kind of gone downhill.) So what am I making? I've been searching around the wonderful world of Pinterest and finding lots of ideas:

I can't decide! I'm thinking of either making Hot Crab Dip or Crab-Stuffed Jalapeños. It depends on the quality of jalapeños we can get up here; sometimes they're really fresh but other times they look 1 day shy of becoming jalapeño soup.

I'll let you know what I pick later, but here are both recipes for your cooking pleasure:

Hot Crab Dip

from Adryon's Kitchen

Ingredients
8 oz. plain cream cheese
8 oz. chive and onion cream cheese
2 Tablespoons mayonnaise
1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon Old Bay® Seasoning
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon horseradish - this is what drew me in!
6 oz. non-lump crab meat
8 oz. jumbo lump crab meat

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. In a large bowl, mix the cream cheeses, mayonnaise and cheddar cheese thoroughly. (We sometimes use our Cuisinart to whip cream cheese for extra fluffiness.)

3. Sprinkle in the Old Bay®, good ol' Worcestershire (any Two Fat Ladies fans out there?), horseradish, and the 6 oz. of non-lump meat. Mix until combined. Then gently fold in the lump crab meat.

4. Empty the bowl into an oven-safe dish that can ideally hold 4 cups worth of goodness. Cover the dish with aluminum foil and place in the oven. Cook for 40 minutes, uncovering half way through, or until the top of the dish is golden brown and bubbly.

5. Let it rest for about 10 minutes so you don’t burn your mouth. Adryon suggests to serve it with crusty bread or celery and carrots. She also says that if you prepare it a day in advance, then bake it the day-of, the flavors are that much better!

Crab-Stuffed Jalapeños
adapted from Saveur
(I'm changing up some things, since we don't fry stuff)

Ingredients
10–12 medium jalapeños
1/4 lb lump crab meat
3 tbsp cream cheese, at room temperature
1 tbsp finely chopped cilantro leaves
1 tbsp finely chopped parsley leaves
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 1/2 tbsp plus 3/4 cup dried bread crumbs
2 tsp fresh lime juice
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a baking sheet and set aside.

2. Cut off the tops and halve each jalapeño. Remove the seeds if you want (and remember, the pith holds a lot of heat, but if you want to remove that too you should probably just stop eating jalapeños).

3. Mix together crab, cream cheese, cilantro, parsley, shallots, 1 1/2 tbsp bread crumbs, and lime juice in a bowl. Stuff each jalapeño with about 1 tbsp of filling; transfer to a plate.

4. Put remaining bread crumbs into a shallow dish. Put flour into another small dish. Whisk together milk and eggs in a bowl. Dredge each jalapeño in flour, shaking off excess. Dip jalapeño in egg mixture, roll in bread crumbs, and transfer to a baking sheet, cut side up.

5. Bake jalapeños for 30 minutes or until golden brown and bubbly on the inside. I got the baking modification from Emeril Lagasse's "Baked, Not Fried" episode, and he suggests you serve these bad boys immediately with a cold beer. But it's up to you.

Emeril's baked poppers look delicious,

but imagine how much better they'd be with crab!

What are YOU going to make for Super Bowl Sunday?

UPDATE!!!

I went with the crab dip, and my honest opinion: it needs WAY more horseradish. Maybe it's my Polish side, but I doubled the amount of horseradish used (it was what drew me in, after all) and I still couldn't taste it in the finished product. Next time I may go with a different dip entirely, but if I do I'll be sure to share the recipe with you!

How to prepare and cook Dungeness crab

Paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) is a health concern with symptoms of numbness or tingling of the face, arms, and legs, dizziness, nausea, and, in severe cases, death. It's pretty prevalent in Southeast Alaska and you can get it from eating clams and mussels that have bioaccumulated neurotoxins produced by the microalgae Alexandrium sp. The neurotoxins don't lose potency just from freezing the meat or cooking it.

incidents of PSP, showing why people stick to the

'R' months when harvesting bivalves

Neurotoxins are also accumulated in crabs, although they're only found in crab viscera ("innards") and not the meat. This is why it's important to know how to properly prepare your Dungies before cooking and eating them. (Read more about PSP in Dungeness crabs Metacarcinus magister here.)

a lovely Dungeness crab complete with barnacle accessory!

The basic steps to properly, quickly, and safely killing and cleaning your Dungeness crabs are to:

1. Crack off the top of their carapace quickly. You can even see a depiction of this step by famed Alaskan artist Rie Muñoz here.

2. Clean out their internal organs - this is what kills them almost instantly because it quickly removes their heart and nerves (remember learning about crustacean nervous systems from this post?), and by removing their hepatopancreas and other innards you are removing your risk of PSP!

3. Crack the dead crab in half, leaving one claw and four legs on each half. Now you're ready to boil 'em for 5 -7 minutes!

perfectly cleaned, halved, and cooked

For a video, you can click on this link. It's a bit crude, but it shows how the guy can get the job done quickly. The crabs' legs twitch a bit after the fact, but that's just like how human bodies will twitch after they're dead sometimes, so even though in the comments section someone is complaining about the crab being alive after being gutted and halved, that's just not true.

ready to crack into!

I've seen videos and articles on boiling the crabs whole, and even heard a rant from Gordon Ramsay (on MasterChef) on the "inhumane" way of killing crabs by quickly splitting them in half rather than boiling them alive, but this is the best way to do it if you don't want to risk getting PSP.

don't worry, Gordon, I'm still a fan

Luckily for us, researchers are working on a PSP monitoring program to detect the two main players in Alaska, Alexandrium fundyense and A. ostenfeldii, by developing a quantitative molecular assay which can tell not only presence or absence, but also level of toxicity (I learned about it at the 2012 Alaska Marine Science Symposium). 

If you're not into killing your own crabs, no worries - canned crab is just fine, especially if it's not Dungie season in your area. Just promise me you won't use fake krab meat for anything other than a California roll. Remember, that stuff is surimi (mostly ground pollock).

OK, OK, even after observing pollock offloads at the 

Alyeska Plant in Dutch Harbor, I'll still eat this stuff!

So, now that you have your crab meat ready, have fun cooking any of these recipes:

Amalga crab cakes
Crab apple salad
Creamy crab and pepper spread

I'm going to post a couple recipes next week in preparation for Super Bowl Sunday, so keep an eye out for that too!

Crab dip for a crab defense

Congratulations to Laurinda Marcello for successfully defending her Master's thesis!

To celebrate, I made this crab dip for her dinner get-together (I got the recipe from one of those coupon deals you get in the mail):

Creamy Crab and Pepper Spread

Ingredients:
2 green onions, thinly sliced
8 oz cream cheese
6 oz crabmeat (1 can, drained)
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup diced red bell pepper
1 tbsp dijon mustard

(I also threw in a little fall decor, just for fun.)

Directions:
1. Set aside 2 tbsp of the green onions; mix everything else together

don't forget the mustard and cheese like I almost did!

2. Refrigerate for at least an hour

3. Garnish with reserved green onions, and serve with crackers!

Yum! And bonus if you can serve it in a crab bowl!

Shrimpday?

OK, OK, I know Fridays are supposed to be for the crabs. But while I was reading up on methyl farnesoate research in shrimp, I stumbled upon the common name of this species:

Banana Shrimp

Fenneropenaeus merguiensis

This shrimp is bananas!

B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

Can you believe it!?! Banana + Shrimp! Two delicious things come together for one awesome animal! I read about them in a paper (Kuballa et al., 2007) looking at different isoforms of farnesoic acid O-methyl transferare (FaMeT), which may regulate methyl farnesoate synthesis (there are multiple forms of FaMeT! Go science!).

note: his spoon's NOT too big!

Banana shrimp (or prawns. You pick.) occur naturally off Australia, some South Pacific islands, along southeast Asia, India, and Pakistan (see a map here). They are also used for aquaculture, and, as these things tend to happen, have been found "invading" certain regions like the Mediterranean. (Oh, farm-raised shrimp. *sigh*) The wild ones aren't always a safe bet either, for human consumption that is, as some have had heavy metals in their tissues (think mercury, copper, and lead), and while some levels have been within safe limits for people, other have not! Yikes!

banana shrimp go postal!

On that appetizing note, I can't talk about banana shrimp without sharing a banana + shrimp recipe. Truth: I haven't tried this yet. I don't eat much shrimp because of how unsustainable a lot of shrimp fisheries are, but if you check with Blue Ocean Institute's seafood guide, it has a few shrimp fisheries that are A-OK!

Shrimp and Banana Curry

(from About.com)

Ingredients
curry sauce:
6 tbsp butter
6 tbsp flour
2 tsp curry powder
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
2 1/2 cups chicken broth

the rest:
4 firm bananas, peeled
1 tbsp + 2 tsp butter, melted
1 1/2 lbs shrimp, shelled, cleaned, and cooked

Directions
1. For the sauce, melt the 6 tbsp of butter in a medium saucepan. Add the flour, curry powder, salt, and pepper and stir until smooth. Add chicken broth slowly and stir continuously until the sauce has thickened but remains smooth.

2. Preheat the oven to 375 F.

3. Place the bananas in a baking dish and brush with the melted butter. Pour half of the curry sauce over the bananas and bake for 15-18 minutes.

4. Add the cooked shrimp to the saucepan with the remaining sauce and heat through.

5. Serve the curried shrimp and bananas on a bed of rice (might I suggest cooked in coconut milk instead of water??), and enjoy! [serves 4]

Let me know how it turns out if you try this banana-shrimp recipe!

Crab Apple Salad

What do you think of when you hear “crab apple”?

This?

I grew up with a crab apple tree in my front yard,

but this picture was taken in Anchorage (December '06)

Or this?

bwahaha!

find this shirt here

Well I think of this delicious recipe! (You see what I did there? With the ‘apple’ and ‘crab’ put together for hilarious corny puns a-plenty?) We found it in a cookbook Costco gave us for Christmas. Totally random, I know.

Ingredients

1 lb crabmeat

1 large red delicious apple, cored and sliced

1 cup whole pecans

1 cup red seedless grapes

Gorgonzola cheese, crumbled, to taste [I do NOT like gorgonzola cheese, or any moldy cheese for that matter, so I normally replace it with feta or fresh mozzarella cheese]

½ cup mayo [the recipe calls for ¾ cup, but that was too much for this guy (thumbs pointing to me)]

⅔ cup light sour cream [again, the recipe calls for 1 cup, but I reduced that too]

Red leaf lettuce (we just used the artisanal lettuce mix from Costco)

Directions

1. Combine crabmeat, apple, pecans, grapes, and cheese in a bowl.

2. In a separate bowl, mix the mayo and sour cream together.

3. Add the mayo mix to the crab bowl and stir. Chill at least 2 hours before serving.

4. Serve on a bed of lettuce and enjoy!

Makes 6-8 servings if you have it as a side dish

Yum! Even my salt and pepper shakers look excited!