C. sapidus

This should be a pretty normal work week for us, with a few accommodations for blogging logistics. Normally, Mrs. Crab and I eat lunch at one of the two cafeterias at work. One cafeteria is heavily subsidized – it is hard to spend more than $3 USD for pretty decent meal. In the spirit of the foodblog, we decided to take one for the team and eat as many restaurant lunches as our work schedules allow. For international restaurants, the best choices would be Ethiopian, Thai, and/or Indian. We also have a couple of local restaurants in mind – one restaurant offers my absolute favorite cream of crab soup, and the other restaurant serves seasonal foods from a 1790s-era building (wonderful desserts, too). Do y’all have any preferences? Viewer choices will be considered where possible. Workday logistics will definitely interfere with blogging time. I will not be able to post from work, so there will be a long lull during the day. I had hoped to skip out of work early, but that may not be possible because I have some projects due this week. When I get home, there is a mad rush to get dinner on the table while transporting the boys to and from basketball practice. Also, I need to stop by the Asian and Latino markets for some things we didn’t get over the weekend. You get the idea. In other words, you may not hear from me until fairly late in the evening. In the meantime, please feel free to ask questions or chat amongst yourselves. Goodnight!

I'll be happy to PM the recipe to you, but it may not be until next week (I know that you understand why ). Can you get blue crab meat in Hawaii, or do you use something else?

Ding ding ding - we have a winner! I wondered who would notice the plates first. Mrs. Crab is a nurse, so she gets the surgery plate. I had the "grilling on the moon" plate, for obvious reasons.

Thanks to everyone for all of the kind words and encouragement. Let me try to answer some questions - apologies if I missed any. I have not seen The Art of Russian Cuisine, but I’ll keep an eye out. When we want really good Russian food, we whine until our friends from Russia invite us to dinner. They make amazing quantities of delicious Russian food, enjoyed around a crowded table while simultaneous conversations bounce back and forth in multiple languages. No extra sugar – in fact, I probably use less sweetened condensed milk than most folks. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. Howdy, neighbor! I often wondered if there were any eGullet folks in town. Mrs. Crab asked the good folks at Common Market for permission to take pictures for the blog. Apparently, they were interested and supportive. Mrs. Crab responded, “There is another kind of flour?” What a joker. But seriously, bread flour is what happened to be on hand. Mrs. Crab does most of our baking, usually in the bread machine - hence the bread flour. Thanks for the advice on Trung Nguyen blends – I might try mail-order if they aren’t available locally. Your blog picture of Vietnamese coffee and SCM dripping from a spoon was inspirational. I used Cholula hot sauce on the greens, but Sriracha is a great idea <also slaps forehead>. I made “Faidley’s World Famous Crab Cakes” from John Shields’ Chesapeake Bay Cooking. The book has seven crabcake recipes – some use Old Bay, some don’t. Clearly, more research is needed. Ah, yes, the saga of downtown Silver Spring. It seemed to be thriving when I got off the Metro (subway) last week. I don’t follow the redevelopment issue that closely any more – some of the recent developments have been fought over for at least twenty years. I do try to check in every once in a while, though. No offense taken. I like the convenience of a gas grill, but a Weber Smoky Mountain is on my list - it just hasn’t come to the top of the list yet, y’know? Old knees + volleyball = ibuprofen for lunch

Cool - I wondered about slicing up the greens. Do you slice them before or after cooking? Mrs. C and I liked the greens, so there will be a next time. I'm not much of a baker, but the recipe was "biscuits for breakfast" from King Arthur Flour. Freezing is supposed to make the biscuits flakier by delaying when the butter and shortening melt. We still have three biscuit squares in the freezer for use later in the week. Besides, the efficiency of square biscuits appeals to me - no waste, and we don't have to buy a biscuit cutter.

Ribs out of the fridge: The first glitch: we were almost out of smoke pellets. Since we don't have a real smoker, pellets seem to give more smoke flavor than wood chips. We usually use hickory or mesquite pellets to wring as much smoke flavor as possible from our less-than-ideal setup. If we had more pellets, I would have started the ribs off with two smoke packets, and then added two more smoke packets when the first stopped smoking. Oh, well. Smoke pellets in their foil packets, with one small hole for smoke to escape. If you look very, very closely you can see a little smoke. Another potential glitch: we were almost out of propane. I left the back burner off for the first hour or so to conserve fuel, and turned on the back burner when the rumbling of growling stomachs became threatening. Fortunately, the propane lasted just long enough. With only the front burner on, it was easy to keep the temperature down. About half-way done. I use a rib rack, so the ribs in front get a lot more heat than the ones in back. To equalize, I shuffle the ribs front to back every 20 minutes or so. If you look under the grates, you might see the two foil smoke packets in front and the two water pans in the back. Mop: cider vinegar, yellow mustard, and salt. I brush this on in the last half-hour or so. Done! A little smoke ring. The ribs could have used another half hour or so, but the family was hungry and restless. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. Rib aftermath. Elder son was the rib consumption champ tonight.

Guiness stout for me, dry Riesling for Mrs. C. Folks were hungry before the ribs were done, so we started eating. Biscuits, greens, and marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes on the plate . . . . . . and the dinner table.

I love cornbread, but it isn’t on the very short list of things that I know how to bake. Instead, I made biscuits. Ingredients: Out of the freezer, on the parchment paper, and ready to bake: Finished biscuits. Even elder son liked them, and he doesn’t normally like biscuits.

We have had such a ridiculously warm winter, the lent roses (Helleborus x orientalis) are leafing out and ready to bloom. Anyway, tonight’s dinner – presented by food group rather than sequentially. As usual, Mrs. Crab and I shared kitchen duties. I’ll try to answer questions and preview the rest of the week after posting. First, the green stuff. I had never made collard greens before, so thanks again to Ludja and mrbigjas for their advice. We boiled the smoked ham hocks for an hour . . . . . . added collard greens, boiled them a while, and then added the mustard greens. Finished – thanks for the tip, the biscuits did a great job of soaking up the pot liquor. This was something new for me, but Southern greens seemed appropriate for Martin Luther King’s birthday. So, any greens experts out there: did I make a mess of my greens? Eternal cucumbers (thanks for the memorable phrase, Priscilla). Salad greens. Mrs. Crab made a salad dressing of key lime vinegar, canola oil, and sugar.

what ludja said. and don't forget to dip your cornbread in the pot liquor. Ludja and mrbigjas: Thank you both! I cut off the bottom part of the leaves, cooked the greens until they were pretty mushy, picked the meat from the hocks, and added salt, pepper, and cider vinegar at the end. Younger son doesn't like spicy so much, so we will have hot sauce on the table. No cornbread, but we made biscuits.

I notice that you use a brand of Sriracha sauce other than Huy Fong. Do you find this brand tastier? Is the taste noticeably different, and if so, how? ← I usually use Huy Fong, but the Asian market was out last time we needed Sriracha. I like the taste of this brand, but the glass bottle is a pain - Huy Fong's squeeze bottle is much easier to use.

I need some quick advice on cooking Southern-style greens. We have two bunches of collard greens and one bunch of mustard greens. Smoked ham hocks are already bubbling away in four cups of water. Question 1: For the collard greens, how much of the stem gets used? Do I cut the two leaf-sides away from the central stem, or do I just cut off the tough stem end? Question 2: Should I throw the mustard greens in with the collard greens, throw them in later, or not mix greens in the same pot? Yeah, I'm "green" when it comes to greens. This is my first time so please be gentle.

After lunch, I made some Vietnamese coffee in special filter. I first drank Vietnamese coffee two decades ago, and immediately fell in love with it. After a number of attempts to make it without the special filter, I finally invested the necessary $3.69 and followed the instructions in Vietnamese coffee, MmmMmMm (clickety). Ingredients and equipment: Special filter assembled. The kettle is sort of fun – it sounds like a harmonica when the water boils. I'm still working on the optimal combination of grind size/filter loading/filter pressure, but it seems pretty forgiving. Oh. My. Goodness – if ca phe sua nong isn’t the ultimate way to drink coffee, I don’t know what is. I prefer a relatively dark roast and about a tablespoon or two of Carnation sweetened condensed milk (other brands of SCM have a nasty aftertaste, in my experience). I’ll probably try Trung Nguyen coffee and Longevity brand sweetened condensed milk eventually. Any recommendations on which Trung Nguyen coffee to use? Vietnamese coffee terminology according to this site (click). Ca phe nong = coffee, hot Ca phe sua nong = coffee, sweetened condensed milk, hot (my favorite) Ca phe sua da = coffee, sweetened condensed milk, ice

For lunch, the boys made grilled cheese again. Mrs. Crab makes grilled cheese with Pam, but the boys like theirs with butter. Elder son cut up an apple. Apple art: Grilled cheese art (courtesy of younger son). Mrs. Crab had a portabella burger on whole wheat English muffin, and TrueLemon in her water. She uses the citrus powders on raw vegetables, too. Three WW points for lunch. [dog]”Hey, you gonna eat that?”[/dog] I had leftover smashed potatoes with Sriracha, fruit, and Ibuprofen.

We have two geriatric former pound pups. Yellow dog, nearly 16 years old, has dedicated her life to the acquisition of food. Despite sleeping for 22 of every 24 hours, she still manages to haul her arthritic hips onto the dining room table if we leave food unattended. I am quite confident that our kitchen floor is free of food molecules; I wish that I could say it was free of dog hair. White dog, eleven years old, enthusiastically repels squirrels and rabbits from the back yard. He understands sentences and Pidgin English, and believes that his stuffed animals possess protective powers. Yellow dog, in her usual spot when not underfoot in the kitchen. [dog]“Hey, did he just drop some food?” “Did you say, ‘food’?”[/dog] We make the dogs sit and stay before we put down their dog bowls. “Yay, it’s dog food again!” (apologies to Gary Larson).

Our carnivorous boys have been lobbying for barbecued ribs. I know that folks have strong opinions about this, so I will show our “barbecuing” process with some trepidation. We do not have a smoker, so we use our gas grill, indirect heat, a water tray, rib rack, and foil packets of wood pellets. I know that this isn’t “real” barbecue, but with some fiddling around the end result can be delicious. Anyway, we started with three racks of pork baby back ribs: Removing the silverskin - I use a paring knife to get a corner started, and then grab it with a paper towel and pull. Throwing away the silverskin - this picture is just an excuse to show the trash pull-out. It keeps the dogs out of the trash, and the location flanking the sink makes doing dishes, well, not exactly a pleasure but less of a burden. Shaking on the dry rub – we use the Memphis rib rub from Barbecue Bible with a few modifications. Ribs ready to go in the fridge for a few hours. Oops, forgot to upload the picture – I’ll fix that in a bit.

Good (late) morning! Mrs. Crab made coffee and breakfast while I slept in. Ingredients . . . . . . and the finished product: bacon and eggs on a whole-wheat English muffin. The boys drank Danimals (a sweetened yogurt and fruit drink) with their breakfast. I ate my breakfast with Sriracha, and Mrs. Crab had hers without bacon - 4 WW points, plus she assigned herself half a point for eating a bite of bacon. [dog]Smells good - are you gonna eat that?[/dog] Mrs. Crab made an extra egg, so I finished it off with more Sriracha. We always have fruit around for snacking during the day. This week we have bananas, Fuji apples, blood oranges, and Clementine oranges. We often need to buy more fruit (especially bananas) during the week.

After some calculations this morning ("How many Saltines are in a cup of crushed Saltines?"), Mrs. C determined that the crabcakes were 5 points apiece.

I have to say that I'm really intrigued about the idea of broccoli slaw in borscht. Have you made it with this before? How does it taste? Cabbage is, of course, de rigeur for borscht, but broccoli...sounds yummy. (I'm a big, big fan of the borscht...the ultimate winter comfort food. And I'm a HUGE fan of the Please to the Table cookbook.) ← Mrs. C has used broccoli slaw in her borscht before. For those who may not be familiar with it, broccoli slaw contains stalks of broccoli, cauliflower, and red cabbage, shredded to the size of toothpicks. Mrs. C uses broccoli slaw interchangeably with cabbage slaw – it stays crisper in her Asian-style salad (similar to the Asian-style salad that SuzySushi showed in her blog). For the borscht, the broccoli slaw will soften but remain intact during the long simmer.

I hope to cook my first recipe from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen this week.

Credit to Mrs. Crab for the pancakes. I always enjoy your Dinner! posts - you have such an interesting mix of cultures going on in your kitchen.

Oops, I gave the wrong impression - we will be eating crabs, but not making them. Going to a crab joint with newspaper on the tables is a quintessential Maryland experience (although some of the high-class crab joints use brown paper rather than newspaper). The main drawback to making crabs at home is the next day - the, um, powerful aroma of rotting crab guts can perfume an entire neighborhood. I prefer to enjoy the crabs and leave the stench behind. We did steam crabs once when I was about 12. On vacation at the Outer Banks of North Carolina with a friend's family, we saw a fishing boat captain pulling crabs from his net and tossing them in the water. We asked the captain if he would give the crabs to us, and he did (I later discovered that they aren't supposed to do that, but apparently he was willing to bend the rules for two enthusiastic twelve-year-olds). Anyway, we brought the crabs back to the RV in a cardboard box and steamed them according to the directions on a can of Old Bay. We did a lot of things wrong, but the crabs were delicious anyway. Thank you, Shaya - please do let us know the next time you and your family are in the area.

Why thank you, but you are way to generous. I'm trying a lot of new things these days, so I really haven't mastered any of them. I had trouble with the fish fragrant pork slivers, too. Favorites from Land of Plenty include dry-fried chicken (gan bian ji), dry-fried beef slivers (gan bian niu rou si), fish braised in chili bean sauce (dou ban xian yu), fish-fragrant eggplant (yu xiang qie zi), and the cold chicken appetizers - chicken in red oil sauce (hong you ji kuai), hot and numbing chicken slices (ma la ji pian), and bang bang chicken (guai wei ji si)

Thank you, Pontormo. I grew up inside the beltway in Silver Spring. Progress has changed downtown Silver Spring, sometimes for the better and sometimes not so much. National chains have displaced a lot of the inexpensive “ethnic” places that I loved, but a few old favorites are still around. I took some pictures a couple of weeks ago, all within a single block of Thayer Avenue. The Thai Market is excellent – I frequently see it listed as a resource in the back of Thai cookbooks. Negril has amazing beef patties, jerk chicken, and an incredibly dense and delicious sweet potato pie. Ethiopian restaurants seem to have moved out to the suburbs. Back in the day, we had to go to Adams-Morgan for Ethiopian food. The sign for an Indian restaurant in the next block is too small to read. My favorite Indian vegetarian restaurant, Siddhartha, would have been behind me as I took the picture. Their Mysore masala dosas (dosai?) were among the best things I have ever eaten.

Lucylou - Thank you! Jumbo lump crab meat is mostly huge, unbroken, gleaming-white chunks of pure backfin crab meat. "Backfin" is a lower grade, with smaller pieces and more dark claw meat mixed in. It still tastes great, but jumbo lump crab meat is glorious stuff. I'll ask Mrs. Crab about the WW points in the morning - she said that they were fairly low.