The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Yeah, it's that time of year again. Consider this a PSA, since it is such a short season. So delicious. 3 will set you back $6.00 right now. Worth every cent. Good thing I live so close to Chinatown.

Fiddlehead ferns. For one.

When left to fend for myself at dinnertime, I usually don’t put in much effort. I order sushi. Or just have potato chips. Or, when I realize I have an opportunity to have meat, steakonaplate (Meaning: Steak. On a plate. No veg. Goes well with an episode of Dexter.)

Tonight JustAwesome is off to a class called Wholesome Grain Salads That Deliver (Peter Berley) at the Natural Gourmet Institute, which will probably be really useful this summer when we want to eat light, healthy and I’m still trying to lose some tonnage. The NGI, by the way, has a Friday Night Dinner, which can be a fun activity with some friends.

Since it is still soft shell crab season (and JA doesn’t love them), I’ll do that tonight. And spare you the gruesome details of how you have to cut off their eyes to kill them. Oops. What makes this night different from all other nights, is that we have some fiddlehead ferns in the fridge that I’m afraid won’t be good if I don’t make them tonight (ok, they might be a little past their prime). And I hate to waste veggies. And so we have: Fiddlehead ferns. For one. Maybe I’ll even make a salad, with some leftover dressing from the Challenge. We'll see...

There are tons of ways to prepare them. I’ll do what I always do. Sauté with garlic & olive oil. Add herbs. Smoke herbs.

Um, someoneawesome didn't charge the camera battery so I took this with my cell. It’s just as well. The ferns look disgusting. Taste yummy.

Jonesin’

Before

So, we are just about entering the most exciting time of year, yeah you guessed it, soft shell crab season. There are few things that I enjoy more. Soft shell crabs rank up there with ramen, JustAwesome, potato chips and Scout (in no particular order). It’ll be a month before we start seeing them on the streets of Chinatown (and I’ll get to eat them with some regularity) but I just couldn’t wait. I headed west to Citarella to get my fix.

Fans of crabs tend not to cook them at home because it is a little gruesome, if you have a heart. I don’t, I guess. The ones from Citarella, it turned out, were already dead and cleaned (which is a huge no-no to soft shell crab aficionados). But I didn’t know this until I got home. So I cooked ’em up with a small amount of oil after dredging them in a flour/cayenne pepper mixture. And ate. Oh Lordy! So good. I can hardly wait until I get me some more. I’ll re-blog this when I kill and cook them properly.

After

Incidently, I think the crabs are about 0 WW Points each before the oil/flour.