What is it about the summer time that make seafood so appealing?  I suppose it’s the obvious hot weather and the light nature of seafood that combine to make a great harmony.  So I guess the recent seafood kick we’ve been on lately in the kitchen is justified with the newly welcomed sunny weather here in New England.  This rendition features perhaps my favorite New England seafood (behind lobster of course) – the crab.

Crabs in New England don’t have the proverbial girth of their west coast cousins like the Dungeness and King crabs you find in the pacific northwest and in Alaska (queue ‘Deadliest Catch’ music).  However, because they are cousins to those beauties, they do still come with that certain delicate crab texture and of course the extraordinary sweet flavor that I crave.

Here in New England the local crabs are abundant off of the coast and in the Gulf of Maine.  They are called Peekytoe or Rock crabs and Jonah crabs, the former is a bit smaller (though a closer cousin to the Dungeness) and therefore harder to pick.  The Jonah crabs tend to live in deeper waters, can be bigger and meatier too.

When seeing out to make this dish, I think the perfect combination is a mixture of the two types of crab.  Of course, if you’re in Maryland or the south, use the excellent local Blue crabs – or the Dungeness variety if you’re on the west coast and it’s crab season.  As a wiser man than me once said: ‘Use the crabs that are caught closest to your house.”

I set out to do crab cakes (who doesn’t love crab cakes?) with a salad for a perfectly simple summer dish.  I made a critical mistake in my recipe thinking for this and forgot to add an egg (or too few filler cracker crumbs).  So the cakes didn’t stay together in the pan.  No worries though, as the recipe quickly turned into crab melts on sprouted sourdough bread.  Here’s how they ended up:

• 8 oz. (1/2 lb.) crab meat – use local crab!
• 1/3 cup ground saltine crackers
• 3 Tbsp.  good mayonnaise (homemade or Hellman’s does the trick)
• 1 tsp. Dijon mustard
• 1 tsp. ground yellow mustard
• 1/4 cup parsley (more if you like)
• 1-2 scallions – finely diced
• 1 tsp. old bay seasoning (substitute this with 1/2 tsp. each cayenne pepper and lawrie salt)
• 1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
• 1 Tbsp. fresh Thyme (lemon thyme is best here if you can find it) – chopped
• Salt and Freshly ground black pepper to taste
• A good splash of olive oil and a pad of butter

For the Sandwich melts, you’ll need:

• 2 slices of sourdough bread
• 2 thin slices of cheese – Havarti, Jack or Muenster
• Parsley for garnish (optional)

Basically to make the crab salad, you want to mix together all of the first listed ingredients.  Start by grinding up the crackers in a food processor or in a big bowl by hand.  Add them last to the mixture.  Start with the crab, herbs, spices and condiments and mix them all together gently.  Add in the crackers and put the mixture in the fridge to chill out for 30-60 minutes.  This is an important step, as it will let the flavors come together and develop.

Preheat the oven to 400 F.  Once the mixture has had a chance to rest in the fridge, you can make the cakes that will make your melts.  Start with a large non-stick pan over medium heat and add in the olive oil and the butter.  Once the butter starts to froth, form the crab mixture into 2 medium cakes and add them to the pan.  Once they’ve browned a bit on one side, flip them (if they fall apart a bit, put them back together with your spatula).  Once they’re browned on both sides (but not burned!) place each on a piece of bread and onto an oven safe sheet.

Top the melts with a slice of the cheese, some salt and freshly ground pepper and place them in the oven.  Bake until the cheese has melted, but hasn’t browned or burned – about 8 minutes.  The bottoms of the bread should be lightly toasted.  Top with some parsley and serve.

Man, I love crab.  Of course I badly miss the amazing Dungeness crab that you find in the Pacific Northwest.  The sweetness of the Dungeness is truly awesome, especially with some sourdough bread…classic SF (if you’re there go to Acme).  Here in New England, the best crab you can find that is fairly close to home comes from Maryland (though that’s not exactly local).  The local Jonas and Rock crab that you find along the Maine coast and in southern New England states is smaller and the meat doesn’t hold together as the amazing jumbo lump crab that comes from the blue crabs does.

Living in the Bay area, it was always a struggle to get Aimee interested in eating local crab any other way than with sourdough and a touch of mayo.  “Let’s incorporate it into a pasta,” I’d argue, but usually to no avail.  It was hard to argue though, this way of eating crab is divine.

So last night, since I was buying, I set out to produce a dish that contrasted flavors using crab and creating a larger dish – incorporating it into a pasta.  I knew the flavor combinations I was looking for: spicy (lots of crushed red pepper), savory (crab and garlic) and a bit of sweetness (caramelized onion).  There was even some bitterness from the radicchio.  The result was something that tasted very Italian and worked well with dry linguine, as opposed to fresh.

The basis of this recipe comes from Mario Batali’s awesomely simple cookbook Molto Italiano – which I’ve been way into since reading Bill Buford’s book Heat.  Molto Italiano focuses on delicious recipe combinations typically using only a few ingredients.  What’s great about these recipes is that it makes traditional Italian dishes like Arancini and fresh pasta seem accessible to the home cook – which they should be.  I basically followed this pretty close, but the caramelized onions were my addition.  Here’s how it went down:

• 3/4 lb. crab meat – blue, dungeness or Alaska king crab recommended
• 1 lb. dry Linguine
• 1 small head or 1/2 a large head of radicchio – shredded thin
• 1 large yellow onion – sliced into fairly thick (1/2″) half moons (for caramelizing)
• 5 cloves garlic – diced
• 4 scallions – chopped on the bias
• 1-2 Tbsp. crushed red pepper – adjust depending on your spice tolerance
• 3 shallots – sliced fairly thin, but not diced
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil – 1/4 cup for the onions and 1/4 cup for the overall dish
• 2 Tbsp. butter
• 1.5 cups dry white wine
• Salt to taste
• Squeeze of lemon juice on top

Start by doing caramelized onions – and prep the rest of your ingredients while your onions are going.

In a heavy pan or pot over low-medium heat, add 1/4 cup of the olive oil, onions and a pinch of salt, and brown them slowly, stirring every once in a while as to keep them from burning.  This should take 20-25 minutes and will result in a deep brown, super sweet onion.  Once they’re good to go, remove them from the heat and set aside.

Next, start the water for the pasta: in a large pot, add water and a solid 1-2 Tbsp. of salt and bring to a boil.  Add the pasta and cook until JUST al dente – don’t overcook!

While that’s going, put together the rest of the dish: Heat a fairly large pan over medium high heat and add the oil – it should be almost to the smoking point.  Add the shallots, garlic and red pepper and sautee until the shallots and garlic become golden brown, about 3 minutes.  Add in the wine and bring to a boil, this will happen fairly quickly.  Let the wine cook off for about a minute and then add the butter.  Stir in the butter as it’s melting and lower the heat on the pan to low.  At some point when the pasta is done, drain it but be sure to reserve a little bit of the pasta water.

Add in the pasta, crab, shallots, carmelized onions and scallions to the wine mixture and toss to combine, adding in a little bit (1Tbsp. or so) of the pasta water.  Finish with a splash of lemon juice and serve – top with a little lemon zest if you want too.  Enjoy!

Serves 6 (or 8 as a first course)