Super Seasonal

I’ve literally been waiting to pull this one off for over a month because so many of the ingredients only overlap in availability for a window of just a few weeks. This is a rare occasion for my waist-line and my wallet. It’s a bit lengthy, but if you’re a foodie, you might enjoy reading what’s below.

 

Beer-Battered Soft-Shell Crabs with Spring Vegetables, Benne, and Soft Fried Duck Egg

There is a LOT going on here, but the star is the soft-shell crab. A soft-shell crab is a crab that is molting and has just shed its hard shell, so you just eat the whole thing (ideally after cleaning it a bit, most often served fried). They are plentiful for the few months that they exist and then they are gone. A true delicacy. In the US, we eat the blue crab and Wikipedia will tell you it’s available from April to September, but my boy Shane at Central Market can only get the hook up from about June through July. In addition, this dish features a pistou (a Provençal sauce similar to a pesto, less the pine nuts, and no basil here) made from pea shoots, also pretty seasonal. There is a bed of veggies under the crab (not totally visible in the picture), including English peas, leaves of garlic scapes (blooming garlic) from the farmer’s market standing in for ramps (low country wild onions) which I could not find, and morel mushrooms which are very difficult to find fresh and go for $60/lb. While at the farmer’s market—just because I could—I picked up duck eggs, so that’s the runny egg on top- even more richness. The batter for the crab contains benne seeds (a low country version of sesame seeds) and the beer I used is Shiner Blonde from Texas. I fried the crabs in a dutch oven outside on my grill so that the house wouldn’t smell sickeningly awesome for the next several days. The dish was delicious, the fry and batter was light like tempura, the veggies were flavorful, the morels remarkable—though the garlic leaves were a bit fibrous. I look forward to continuing to take advantage of soft-shell crabs while they’re around.

Benne-Buttermilk Rolls

Pretty much speaks for itself. Buttermilk rolls sprinkled with fleur de sel and benne seeds cooked in a cast iron skillet. Great way to start a meal. Fresh baked bread- hello?! Kara requested I brush them with melted butter and I think her instincts were right.

Raspberry Lime Sorbet

Dessert to finish us off. Again, not much to say here, but also seasonal, and even after making all of the above, because of freezing times, this thing had to be started several hours before everything else (days, if you count freezing the ice cream maker)!