This one truly went to 11 (to quote Spinal Tap). I was in Sacramento visiting friends and having a wonderful dinner at Localis–more on that trip this weekend–and I knew this was my chance to pick up some fresh seafood I couldn’t get in my home town. So, I packed a cooler with me in the car and asked the chefs at Localis where I should go to get live Dungeness crab in the morning (it’s in season right now), and they said without hesitation, Sunh Fish.
I wasn’t disappointed. It’s a well-stocked, efficient, and friendly market with decent prices given the quality and range they offer: live crab and lobster, sashimi-grade fish of several sorts, uni flown in from Japan, plump prawns, and a whole case of oysters–and that’s in addition to the high-quality frozen fish they supply to local restaurants. Along with the rest of the stuff I needed for ESC #11, the manager picked me out 4 of the feistiest crabs (one of them pulled out of the tank hanging by the claw it was gripping his tongs with), I packed them in their paper sack inside a plastic sack with ice in the cooler, and we were off.
Once I got home, it took quite a while in the freezer to get the crabs trundled off to dreamland–about an hour (I kept opening the freezer drawer to check, and I would see their claws sticking out of the paper bag going snap snap and slam it shut again). But after that, it was quick and easy to follow these instructions for humanely killing and cleaning them, and within minutes they were steaming away.
This menu was a LOT of work, but it was fun and worth it: all the menu items were a hit with the ESC crew. I made the Lady Marmalade with sparkling sake and yuzu marmalade from my little tree; the Vietnamese stir-fried crab with garlic noodles was predictably awesome; and the freeze-dried berries were a nice, tart, crunchy surprise in the coconut rum cake. Probably the biggest surprise of the night was the coconut shrimp–how easily the dish came together and how delicious it was; but that probably depends pretty heavily on the quality of the prawns you’re working with.
The Rookery 