CRAB SEASON

HELLFIRE SAUCE IN YUCATAN’S SISAL BEACH

Until you have tasted a pig right out of the ground, you cannot know the meaning of perfect fat.

At a house in the beach town of Sisal, Yucatan, we did.

I was there to find out how nixtamalization is done at the grandma level. As opposed to in nationalized factories turning out masa (the ground corn paste that makes tortillas). That factory stuff is poisonous and tastes like it. Industrial fat is killing everyone after it first fattens them up.

Now when I walked through the door to bow to grandma there was so much smoke coming across the patio that I thought we were burning down. She shooed aside the huge white turkeys with turquoise wattles, clucked at the dogs asleep and in the way, and led me back to the fire. There on top of a decent pile of flaming logs was an enormous kettle filled with corn and, she said, “cal.” (Cal is short for calcium hydroxide, or dried lime.) Soaked in cal water overnight and then simmered for eight hours, the husk falls right off the kernels of corn.

After that it was time to dig our fingers into a pig that had been turned into cochinita pibil by marinating in achiote paste and sour orange juice, wrapped in banana leaves, and cooked in a hot-stone pit in the ground. The dogs woke up, licked my fingers, and went back to sleep.

I felt like a nap too, but first needed to look around town.

Sisal used to be the port from which all the Yucatan’s rope fiber from sisal was exported to the world, but now it relies mainly on fish and sustainable quiet to survive. After a lesson at one house on how to make fish kibbe, and then another on how to make ceviche out of fish still jumping on the butchering table, I arrived at the lagoon as the white-tern-laced sky turned flamingo pink. With throat muscles parched from the nixtamalization smoke, my heart leapt when I saw a long table with a white tablecloth and a huge tub of iced beer.

“Just one,” I was told, “we still have to catch the fish.”

After we caught a grouper, the temperature was still hovering around 95 and had hit around 110 next to the fire they had started for the fish and crabs (assuming we caught any),  so I announced I was not going near any crabs, blue or otherwise, until I had sucked down two cold ones.

Then we were off across the glass-like water.

An hour later we came back with a basket of crabs.

In the almost dark I could see more fire on the beach. One to fry the blue crabs and one to cook our grouper. The fisherman split it open, smeared more achiote adobo on it, and covered it with sliced tomatoes and sweet red onions. But first the crabs. After two more beers and some damage from a bottle of tequila that appeared out of the dark, I was not sure what fat the crabs were sizzling in.

Pig or peanut?

It didn’t matter since we chewed the crisp legs and sucked out the steaming juices from the bodies. As for the fish, I scooped up the tomatoes and onions and ate those first in some tortillas and had another beer while looking out at the black lagoon, and listened to my favorite Yucatan birds, the X’kau or grackles, bedding down for the night. I smiled at the victorious cries of the egrets as they finally found a perch.

I knew I certainly had. 

It is also now the crab claw season again. Stone Crab.

Photo credit Trulucks.

It’s a day I look forward to all year.

And when If I hear ‘What’s is so great about them,’ I know the person asking has had only the frozen and watery ones. That need a smothering of good mayonnaise to deserve their handfuls of dollars it takes to eat them. In Celestun (round the bend of the Gulf of Mexico from Sisal) last weekend I had the benchmark of manitas de cangrejo. Perhaps as good as the legendry Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami, but I don’t know. The only time I tried to get in they wouldn’t let me. That was before Stars days.

I have already written of the fire at a Miami motel that stuck me out at its pool at 3 am while the firemen did their work. No one else in sight except a night watchman. And a pool menu with stone crab claws. I bribed him to break into the kitchen for champagne and claws. Then I said ‘no’ to the puzzling offering warm “drawn” butter to go with cold claws. But the Celestun claws came with warm garlic butter. I stared at it. Then tried it with the iced crab. Not bad, but then so is almost anything with enough butter.

At the Santa Fe Bar & Grill in Berkeley in 1980, we started a series of festivals celebrating the culinary regions of the USA. The first was Florida (much to everyone’s surprise at that time), and we featured Miami and the Florida Keys with stone crab claws that we flew in for the occasion. My inspiration had been Marjorie Rawlings’ great cookbook Crosscreek Cookery. We served the claws with Green Goddess mayonnaise mixed with chopped hard-cooked eggs, dollops of Paddlefish caviar, and pink pomelo sections.

Now I would not put pomelo and caviar on the same plate. I would move the dish closer to one of my all-time favorites, the peppered mangrove crab at Casa Armas in Manilla. The whole crab is cooked there in lashings of butter, lots of salt, and a cup of ground black pepper. 

The Hellfire Sauce here was an invention also of the Santa Fe Bar & Grill master grill chef Steven Vranian. He went on to Stars in San Francisco and then to Stars in Singapore, where this sauce was born. I poured it on all kinds of things besides our South China Seas Hairy Crabs, on grilled fish, over fries, on oysters grilled in their shells, or with a soft-shelled crab po’ boy sandwich.

Stone Crab with Hellfire Sauce

You can serve the cold crab with Green Goddess mayonnaise or whatever your favorite sauce for crab, including the ancho chili sauces below instead of Hellfire, but whichever buy the crab claws fresh if you can. If heating, as here. and they have been frozen, remember that you are only warming the claws, not cooking them. 

Serves 4-6

24 jumbo stone crab claws

2/3 cup clarified butter

2 tablespoons sea salt

2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper

¼ cup minced fresh garlic

Heat the clarified butter in a sauté pan over high until hot but not smoking. Add the crab claws, toss in the butter, and add the salt and pepper. Continue heating while tossing for 2 minutes. Add the garlic, cover, turn down the heat to medium, and cooking, tossing occasionally, for another 2-3 minutes or until the claws are heated through.

Pour the claws onto a hot white platter and arrange in a pile with the claws sticking up.

Serve with ramekins of ancho chili mayonnaise, melted butter, Hellfire sauce, shellfish crackers, and fresh lemon or jasmine tea-scented finger bowl for each person.

Hellfire Sauce

The Hellfire Sauce keeps for up to 3 months in the refrigerator.

6 fresh habanero chilies

2 cups freshly squeezed lime juice

3 tablespoons kosher salt

4 tablespoons brandy

1 teaspoon bitter (Angostura or Pechaud)

Cut the stems off the chilies. Wear gloves if you are chopping or use the food processor. In each case, be careful of your eyes. Rough chop the chilies, seeds and all. Wash your hands.

Put the lime juice and salt in a glass container like a preserving jar and shake to dissolve the salt. Add the chopped chilies, brandy, and bitters. Mix well.

Cover with cheesecloth and let sit at room temperature for 5 days. Strain, cover (or bottle), and refrigerate.

Ancho Chili Puree & its Sauces

Ancho chilies are dried, ripened Poblano (“Pasilla” in California) chilies. They are mild, with a full and complex range of flavors, allowing the taste of chilies without the pain that a lot of them bring on. This puree has an almost infinite range of uses, especially for flavoring sauces. Add it to sour cream, butter sauces, vinaigrettes, compound butters, the hollandaise family, fish stocks and veloutés. The list is almost endless. I have even put some in lime juice to pour over mangoes, white peaches and nectarines.

From the first days of the Santa Fe Bar & Grill in 1981, this puree was a mainstay in sauces. Make a lot at one time, for it will keep in a sealed jar in the refrigerator up to two weeks. It is also an excellent marinade for grilled fish, meats, and poultry.

I do not usually like using raw onion in anything that is going to stay around for more than an hour, let alone a week, but this fabulous puree improves with age.

Makes 1 cup

10 dried ancho chilies

1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

1 small red onion, peeled, stemmed, quartered

2 cloves garlic, peeled

¼ cup apple or wine vinegar

1 teaspoon dried oregano leaves

½ cup olive or good quality peanut oil

Salt

Put the chilies in a bowl and add water to cover. Weight them with a plate so they are all submerged and let them soften overnight.

The next day, remove and discard the stems and seeds. Puree the flesh with the lime juice, onion, garlic, vinegar, and oregano in a food processor. Push the puree through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl. Whisk in the oil.

Season to taste with salt.

Ancho Chili Creamed Mayonnaise

Mix 2-4 tablespoons (less for fish, more for vegetables and grilled meats) of the ancho puree with ½ cup of mayonnaise and ½ cup of sour cream.

Ancho Chili Sauce for Fish & Shellfish

Mix 2 tablespoons of ancho chili puree with ½ cup of rich fish and/or shellfish stock and simmer for 2 minutes. Whisk in 4 tablespoons of unsalted butter until you have a fine emulsion. Do not let boil, but the sauce can be kept warm in a barely hot water bath. For an herbed sauce, add 1 teaspoon of finely chopped fresh tarragon, basil, or cilantro. Also, you can add at the last moment, 2 tablespoons of chopped ripe tomatoes.

Ancho Chili Vinaigrette

Mix 2 tablespoons of the ancho chili puree with 1 tablespoon of good vinegar with 6 tablespoons of olive oil to pour over poached fish, steamed vegetables, or raw fennel or celery root salad.