What's For Dinner?

Ladies and Gentlemen... start your engines! Crab fishing season is open!

July 1 marks the beginning of the Dungeness crab fishing season here. The season runs from July first through Labor Day. You are allowed to set traps from Wednesday to Saturday and catch a limit of 4 crab per person per day. Consequently there is always lots of crab on offer from friends and neighbors. It is always a happy day when a friend drops 2 or 3 crabs off already cooked in sea water. We will enjoy it as is the day it arrives but... How much crab can you eat? So, what to do with the leftovers?

Naturally I love having this sort of dilemma. So, crabcakes - a natural. But I always find that recipes add too many ingredients - like mustard and red peppers - that mask the delicate flavor of the crab. Consequently I came up with my own version of crabcakes that has very little besides crab and a binder. Coming from the east coast I, naturally, grew up eating lots of lobster. I thought adapting some lobster recipes might work well with crab. As I prefer to use neutral ingredients to preserve the sweet, subtle flavor of the crab I knew lobster thermadore was out. But what about a bisque? I looked in my "Joy of Cooking" for a lobster bisque recipe and made what I thought to be some appropriate adjustments for crab and came up with a perfect, creamy, crabby bisque. What else? Pasta! I tried the crab in my traditional fish and tomato sauce recipe but felt the tomato flavor did nothing to enhance the crab. So I decided to try removing the tomatoes to see what I thought. The resulting simple garlic/butter sauce was perfect!

So many berries up here this time of year. Raspberries, my favorite, abound at roadside stands. In my mind, there is nothing better than the combined flavors of chocolate and raspberry. I love to make a raspberry puree to drizzle over chocolate brownies topped with ice cream. I often make extra puree and freeze it for a quick summery dessert come winter. I am not much of a baker but peach together with raspberry makes an amazing pie or cobbler filling. It is quite handy that eastern Washington peaches arrive at our local farm stand while the raspberries are still around. The peaches are a great vehicle for the raspberries. They cut down the amount of seeds without taking from the intense raspberry flavor. I just love bread puddings, both savory and sweet. I have an amazing recipe for blackberry bread pudding and last year decided to see if I could create a version that combines my love of raspberries and chocolate. A bit of experimentation and research produced a delicious pudding, richly chocolate and studded with sweet/tart berries.

Our beds of little, gem-like native blackberries yielded an amazing amount of fruit this year. I love to sprinkle the unsweetened berries over vanilla ice cream and drizzle with a little chocolate sauce. So simple and delicous. These berries have a natural tartness which I find lends itself perfectly to a blackberry vinaigrette.

The Recipes

Native Blackberry Vinaigrette

10 blackberries, washed and crushed
1/4 c red wine vinegar
3/4 c extra virgin olive oil
1 t salt
1/2 t freshly ground black pepper

Whisk the crushed blackberries and vinegar together in a medium bowl.

Season lightly with salt and pepper.

Continue whisking the vinegar/blackberry mixture and drizzle in the oil in a thin steady stream.

Start tasting the mixture when about half of the oil has been incorporated. You may need to add more salt and pepper.

Keep whisking in oil until the vinaigrette tastes right to you. It should taste smooth and slightly tart. If it is too sour, keep whisking in oil

Makes 2 servings.

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