Make crab oil. I’m only half-joking. Crab is my favorite sea critter. It’s also quite expensive, which is why a budget-conscious friend avoids it. She likes crab well enough, but then she sees the heap of shells at the end of the meal and gets upset. Such waste! I tell her that’s just the way it is. “The way it is,” she says, “is that until I win the lotto, my family will have to do without crab.” She doesn’t play lotto.
She doesn’t have gout, either. Now there’s a compelling reason to avoid crab (and shellfish in general). It’s the things we love that kill us, it seems. “Why bother?” my father says, although it has less to do with that than it does with the sight of me at the sink, trying to remove as much gunk and goo from crab shells. Ever since Betty Q shared a recipe that utilized crab shells to make crab oil, I had been busy stocking up on the stuff. A diagnosis of gouty arthritis shortly thereafter had hampered the effort, because there is nothing like the exquisite agony wrought by uric acid to make you realize you are not willing to suffer for art, after all. Then I was tipped off to the wonders of fish oil and the project was back on track.
Anyway, if you never get to try crab oil, you will not have missed much. It looks nice drizzled on fried rice and omelette, and brings with it a distinct whiff of shrimp/prawn rather than crab. (I tried sautéing with it but the flavor didn’t quite come through, so better stick to drizzling, as originally suggested.) If someone offers you a bottle of the stuff, grab it; it’s a colorful addition to your condiment rack, and it may turn out to be the only gift of crab oil you will ever get from that person — especially if that person is me. Pa was right: I shouldn’t have bothered and spared myself hours of airing out the kitchen to get rid of the stink and the flies.
So, friends, whenever life gives you crabs, eat them — moderately, if with gout. Then throw away those shells. That’s the way it has been done for millennia. You can’t always improve on tradition.
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