monicaSPEAK

Matagorda Stone Crab Claws

Green Plum Cooking School – Saturday, July 31^st

My mind has already switched back into vacation mode (Yes, again! Every year, I close t’afia for a week so my staff can all have a nice vacation away without worrying about who’s going to cover whose shifts).  But before shutting it all down, I have a class to teach.  I decided, since I’m feeling great about going on vacation and really relaxing, that I will gift the class some Matagorda stone crab claws today.  We don’t get these often, so it’s a real treat.  We also have lots of blueberries right now and I haven’t done blueberries in class yet, so I’m going to make a clafouti.  That’s one of my favorite words, by the way.  I really like saying it.  It is French and it is typically a dessert, but I used to do a zucchini clafouti back in my Boulevard Bistrot days.  A clafouti is a crust-less tart – imagine fruit bobbing in pancake batter, that’s what it’s like.

One Handed Egg Cracking

My kid-assistants are struggling with cracking the eggs for the batter.  I wonder what is wrong with kids these days!  I am coaxing them to do this cracking with one hand because that is about the cockiest technique I’ve got.  Basically, you make a crab-like gesture with your one hand (how appropriate for today!) – making a “pincer” by putting your index finger and middle finger together at the top of the egg and your thumb holding the bottom of the egg – and then hit the middle of the egg on a flat surface to crack it and open your “claw” to get the insides out.  But now, the kids are asking me for towels, which I reluctantly give them.  Ask anyone who works for me, getting a towel around here is the hardest part of their job.  They’ve taken to stashing towels in all sorts of hiding places, even behind their mise en place in their reach-ins.  But, when I find them, I grab them and lock them back up in my locker and then they have to ask me for them again.  Twenty years I’ve been doing this.  Does that make me a control freak?  I think not, just thrifty to a fault.

I’m really just trying to make someone cry and I think it’s going to be my new assistant, Megan.  You know, it isn’t really entertainment until someone cries. Hopefully, it won’t be me.  But since I’m going on vacation tomorrow, nothing can really get to me right now.

Now we need to beat the eggs until they are thick and pale and we need to do this with a Kitchenaid.  But Megan didn’t bring it up from the kitchen downstairs.  I remind her that I told her to bring up anything we needed.  She says, “I didn’t think you meant it!” Gosh, am I really such a control freak?

We are using sugar from our own Wholesome Sweeteners.  They have organic, fair trade sugars and sweeteners from three plantations around the world, but they are based in right here in SugarLand.  I love my relationship with them – they have been so supportive of me; I have even had my picture and a recipe on one of their bags of sugar.

Claflouti Batter

Since it is taking forever to beat the eggs and sugar by hand, I am wondering what happens to the egg when it is beaten.  I know something happens.  Lisa Googles and finds out that beating eggs alters the proteins in the eggs, giving them different properties.  They are, in fact, denatured, or they change in nature.  Heat, beating, adding salt or adding an acid are all denaturing agents.  It just so happens that the website from which Lisa was enlightening us is the Exploratorium. This happens to be in San Francisco, where my mind is anyway.

Now, we are ready to add cream to the eggs, but it comes out gloppy.  “Is it supposed to look like that?” Megan asks, with a look of horror.  She’s new at this and hasn’t learned to finesse the mistakes like I have.  I say, “Ma’am, I just need you to calm down.  It’s not bad cream.  I mean, I don’t think it’s off,” as I taste it.  “I mean, well, whatever — just go downstairs and get another quart of cream.”  Now, Megan is gone and I see the girls stemming my blueberries (or is it de-stemming?).  They haven’t made a dent, even in the time that we’ve been denaturing eggs by hand and drinking bad cream.  They’re actually analyzing each blueberry for its stem and then slowly de-stemming it.  It’s like watching water boil (or denature).  Because I have time, I am still whisking.  Now I’m concerned that you can over-de-nature.  Can humans be denatured somehow?  Will that happen to me on vacation?

Blueberries in Pan

Gently pouring batter

Finally, we scatter the blueberries onto the bottom of our fluted baking dish and ladle the batter carefully over the berries.  I want to cover the berries in batter but not keep them in place so they will bob up and make the dessert look clafouti-ish.  I tell the girls to save the berry baskets as we will give them back to the farmers to re-use.  We really do try to re-use, reduce, or recycle everything.

On to the crab claws, which need to be cracked.  I have the kids crack the crab claws with the mallet and the back of one of my small All-Clad sauté pans.  With kids (aka unskilled labor for the most part), when I say crack, they smash.  When I say cut, they smash.  They basically want to pulverize everything.   I’m seeing a lot of angst in these kids now-a-days. They denature things in ways I can’t even imagine.  These claws are already steamed, so we’re just reheating them in blossom butter and fresh lemon.  The cracking helps the eater.

Sauteing Crab Claws in Blossom Butter

These Matagorda puppies (every time I say that, Lili reminds me that they aren’t really puppies) come from Airline Seafood (located on Richmond Avenue).  The guys at Airline can Tex-celerate your menu with all things local in seafood.  They also make three different kinds of smoked salmons, which are mighty tasty: a classic Norwegian, a French version and a Texan-smoked that I usually get for the market to make small breakfast pizzas with.  Mark Musatto used to work with Bryan Caswell at Bank.  Mark also makes great sauces and condiments to go with your seafood.

Serving claws

Claflouti out of oven

We serve claws and clafouti all around to the fifty or so people who got up today and made it to the market on this last day of a HOT July.  I say “Happy Birthday” to Michelle from Beaumont (we seem to have a nice group of “market trippers” from Beaumont today).  See you when we get back!

NOTE: The recipes used in my Green Plum Cooking School classes can be found in my online cookbook, “Eat Where Your Food Lives,” available for purchase at http://www.ChefMonicaPope.com)