Crustacean Celebration: Crab Bouillabaisse

You can blame climate change for the reason Dungeness crab season was delayed this year. Domoic acid, a dangerous neurotoxin that can cause loss of short-term memory, seizures and sometimes even death, became a problem because of unusually warm ocean temperatures off the West Coast from Alaska to California. These warm waters caused a bloom of an algae called Pseudo-nitzschia, which produces the domoic acid, and while the toxin doesn't affect crabs, clams, anchovies and other fish, it does build up in their bodies when they feed.

It takes crabs a fair amount of time to purge the toxin from their systems once the algae bloom dies off. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife declared Oregon's Dungeness to be safe for consumption as of January 4, 2016, nearly a month later than normal. One of my first responses, naturally, was to go out and buy one for myself. And since I'd been craving a fish stew, I decided to make my first ever bouillabaisse.

Since I'd never made one before, some research was in order. The first resource was my icon of home cook-friendly French cuisine, Ms. Julia Child. One of her recipes calls for making a court bouillon of fish heads, bones and trimmings and adding onions, leeks, tomatoes, herbs and seasonings, which is strained and then used to cook live lobsters—two!—white fish, some shellfish and an eel. Yes, an eel. Well.

I moved on to Jimmy—you may know him as James Beard, but we're very close—who spent a great deal of time with Julia and whose bouillabaisse recipe is a somewhat simplified version of hers.  Though I was impressed with his "soupe de poisson," which calls for taking a couple of pounds of fish (scales, bones and all), cooking it for about half an hour in water, then straining off the "juice"  and adding tomatoes and onions to it. He then throws in some vermicelli, saffron and…this is so Jimmy…Swiss cheese!

A couple of online checks and I had the basic outline of what I was going to do. All it took was a trip to the fish counter at the store, then picking up a couple of things that weren't in my vegetable bin at home, and within an hour of starting the process—thank heavens for having homemade fish stock in my freezer—we were sitting down to steaming bowls of this beautiful fish stew!

Easy Bouillabaisse

1/4 tsp. saffron
1 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 onion, chopped in 1/2" dice
2 small fennel bulbs or 1 large bulb, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tomatoes, chopped in 1/2" dice
1 c. dry white wine
3 qts. fish stock
2 lbs. white fish (cod, tilapia, halibut, rockfish, etc.), sliced in 1" pieces
1 lb. clams
1/2 lb. mussels
1/2 lb. shrimp
1 Dungeness crab, cooked and meat picked from shell

Put saffron threads in mortar and pestle with salt and grind until the saffron is mostly powdered. Set aside.

Heat olive oil in large soup pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add onion and sauté till translucent. Add fennel and garlic and sauté till tender. Add ground saffron, tomatoes, white wine and stock. Bring to a boil, then immediately reduce to simmer for 20 minutes. Add fish, shellfish and crab. Bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer for 10 min.

For even more seriously great crab recipes, from crab cakes to chowders to pasta dishes, check out the Crustacean Celebration chronicles.

Crustacean Celebration: Don't Toss Those Shells!

In a previous post I called it a "Damascene moment." As when Paul of Tarsus was tossed off his horse and blinded whilst on a joyride to Damascus, I've had some mighty revelations in my culinary journeys. The one referred to above involved an admittedly pedestrian but delicious meatloaf, and the second was a head-slapper about corn stock made from freshly-shucked corn cobs that I'd been tossing into the compost for decades. D'oh!

The source material.

This week's landing-on-your-tailbone wake-up call happened when we had a dear friend over for Christmas dinner who doesn't eat red meat, immediately requiring the reconfiguration of dinner from a six-rib pork roast from the pig I'd just butchered to…what, exactly? Tuna loins were a possibility but were so, well, uninspiring to build a Christmas dinner around. Then, when other friends couldn't make a crab-centric Christmas Eve dinner, and being the flexible sorts we are, we subbed in pork chops for the evening's dinner and switched Dungeness crab onto the menu for Christmas Day.

It's a move Dick Button would have effused over as equivalent to a triple Salchow followed by a not-in-the-program quad Lutz, an audacious reconfiguration (though perhaps I exaggerate a tad…). In any case, both dinners were executed in delicious fashion, but I was left with a mountain of crab shells. I was bagging them up to throw in the compost bin when lightning struck. "Throw them out?" a voice boomed in my head, "Are you kidding?"

So many possibilities!

You see, I've become addicted to having fish stock on hand for fish-based risottos, paellas and chowders. But the stock made from the whole fish we buy, after roasting the carcasses, just doesn't supply enough to carry us for long. I'd read about making stock by boiling the shells from shrimp, and then my friend Hank Shaw posted about a crab stock he makes by adding vegetables and herbs to the shells. But since I prefer my stocks simple and unseasoned—the better to adapt to various types of uses—and with a pile of Dungeness shells at the ready, I simply threw them into a pot, covered them with water and let them simmer away for about 45 minutes on the stove.

Strained through a fine mesh sieve and cooled on the counter, I now have several quarts at my beck and call. Bouillabaisse, anyone?

For a plethora of seriously great crab recipes, from crab cakes to chowders to pasta dishes, see the previous posts in the series: 2009, 2010, 2011; 2012 and 2013.

Get More For Your Money: Roast Those Carcasses!

Summer means that cooking moves outdoors, with electricity replaced by fire. Around here we're putting not just steaks and chickens on the grill but fish, usually whole salmon or tuna loins.

Whole albacore on sale.

Albacore season has just started and you'll see whole fish going on sale at supermarkets around town. Caught off our coastline, mostly by small family-owned boats using a pole-and-line method, the entire West Coast fishery has been certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). These smaller fish (12-25 lbs.) are low in mercury and other toxins simply because they haven't spent as much time in the ocean environment as the larger, 40 to 60-lb. fish caught in the deep oceans, the ones that appear in cans on store shelves. (Read my story on Oregon albacore for more information.)

Roast that carcass, don't toss it.

So enjoy roasting those triangular loins, whether whole or sliced into steaks and seared on the outside, leaving the centers barely warm and still pink. But please, oh please, when you buy that whole fish, ask them to bag up the carcass, too, or you'll be throwing away two pounds or so of good meat, not to mention the stock you can make from the bones, fins and head (if you buy it with the head on).

Pick meat off the roasted carcass, then make stock with the bones.

And don't believe those charts meant for chefs that say the yield from a whole albacore, gutted and without the head, is 50% of the weight. From the 17-pound fish (head off) that I bought yesterday, my yield was more than 80% after removing the loins, roasting the carcass (350° for 30 min.), picking off the meat (nearly 2 lbs.!) and then making stock from the bones (2 1/2 qts.). The total weight of bones, fins and detritus that went into the compost bin was only two or three pounds. (Kind of tells you about the food waste that happens in restaurants, though, doesn't it?)

The flaked albacore from the bones will be going into salads, fish cakes, sandwiches and soups or chowders, and the stock is fabulous for paella, risottos, chowders, bouillabaisse, etc. So get the most for your money, roast those carcasses, and reap the delicious rewards!

Here's the blog post from my friend Hank Shaw that got me started roasting carcasses.

The "L" Word: Salmon Risotto

Faster than a speeding bullet…no, I'm not talking about caped superheroes leaping tall buildings, I'm talking about how fast word spreads that a store has salmon on sale. In this case it was steelhead, technically a really big trout, but toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe.

A friend mentioned that a nearby market had steelhead for $3.99 a pound, and faster than that proverbial bullet I was out the door and headed to the market. On the way I phoned Dave (using my ear buds and speaker…I'm not lawless, just in a hurry) to alert him that he'd be firing up the grill that evening, which always elicits a "Boy howdy!" response.

Long story short, I bought the biggest fish in the case, had the butcher fillet it and put the bones, head and tail in a separate bag. (Even at that price I figure since I'm paying for the whole fish—and the bag of bits on this puppy weighed almost two pounds—I'm going to get my money's worth out of it.)

Normally I'd take the carcass and drop it in a pot of water to make stock (right) for chowder, paella, risotto, etc., but my pal Hank Shaw had just that day posted that he roasts the carcass, then pulls the meat off the bones (above left). This gives him about a pound of fish flesh to use for whatever he wants, often a lovely fish salad.

Following his directions, I did exactly that and ended up with a nice pile of cooked salmon in addition to my two fillets. I gave one fillet to a friend who's been supplying me with scads of goodness from her garden, we had the other fillet for dinner and then a couple of nights later I used the roasted bits and some of the leftover (that's the "L" word around here) fillet to make the risotto below. I'd say that's a pretty good score for little bit of gossip!

Leftover Salmon Risotto

2 Tbsp. butter or margarine
3 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 onion, chopped fine
3 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1 Jimmy Nardello pepper or red bell pepper (about 1/2 c.), chopped fine
2 c. arborio rice
1 c. dry white or rosé wine
4 c. stock (I used a light fish stock from a previous carcass)
1 c. frozen corn
1 lb. (or a little more) cooked salmon, flaked
2 egg yolks, stirred to break them up
1/2 c. parmesan or romano cheese, grated, plus more for the table
Salt and pepper, to taste

Melt the butter and margarine in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic and red pepper and sauté till tender. Add the rice and sauté for 30 seconds until hot, then reduce the heat to low and add the wine. Stir until the wine is absorbed. Add the stock a ladle-full at a time, stirring occasionally to keep it from sticking. When the rice is about half done, add the frozen corn and stir to combine. Near the end of cooking, when the rice is still a bit soupy and al dente, add the salmon so it can warm up. When the rice is done, stir in the egg yolks and the half cup of cheese. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve with extra cheese for sprinkling.

As always, this can be made in a microwave oven, too. And you can add kale or chard or parsley at will…it's a very flexible dish.

Photo of roasted salmon carcass by Holly Heyser.