Sunday, June 2, 2013

Mr. Hawthorne Cooks Soft Shells.


 
This is one of my favorite meals -
fried soft shell crab with lots of lemon,
cole slaw, shrimp, sinus-clearing cocktail sauce,
and my dilly tartar sauce.

Pretty little soft shells.

Right now,
soft shells are going for $3.00 a pop at Billy's Seafood.
 
Mr. Hawthorne shows how he cleans soft shell crabs.

Watch carefully.


I always clean out the mustard or tomalley.
This is the hepatopancreas of the crab
which fulfills the functions of both liver and pancreas.

It is considered a delicacy by some.

I hate the shit.

Because that's what it is.

The hepatopancreas is the main component
of the crab's digestive system.
It produces digestive enzymes 
and is responsible for filtering impurities
from the crab's blood.

It's full of chemical contaminants -
things like PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls,
mercury, dioxin, and poison-inhalation hazards.

All of this accumulates in the hepatopancreas.
And it's all carcinogenic.


Snip. 
 Snip.
Expel parts.
  And now you know how to clean soft shells.

To prepare the soft shells,
we soak in buttermilk for about 30 minutes,
then we batter them in a mixture
of 2 parts flour to 1 part cornstarch
plus a little Old Bay seasoning.


I'm excited.
We are serving to soft shell virgins tonight.
(Upon editing, I realized the above sentence
seriously needed the word "to" in it.)

The Foodie Gals of FoodiesUntie blogdom are visiting
and they've never had soft shells before.


We call them spiders of the sea.

And if you've never had one,
you've truly missed out on one of the
greatest treasures of our waters.

7 comments:

  1. Like biting into a toenail

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  2. Yeah, I just can't imagine the texture of that. But toenail sounds about right.

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  3. A damn good toenail. Don't knock it till you've tried it.

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  4. We had them friday night . I don't go to all the trouble Mr. Hawthorne did cleaning them. I use my personality to charm them out of their shells

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  5. They were delicious! Thanks for preparing them for us.

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  6. Thanks for eating them after seeing how they were prepared!

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