Crabs and Spaghetti

Last week­end I had my fam­ily over and I made my favorite child­hood meal for them, Crabs and Spaghetti. I remem­ber…

eat­ing this meal as a child and just lov­ing every minute of it. It is a very messy meal and it takes a bit of time to pick out all the meat but it is well worth it. My father caught half of the crabs and we bought the rest.

How do you make this scrump­tious meal? It is easy. I take a heavy large stock pot and coat the bot­tom of the pot with olive oil and then heat for about 3 min­utes or until fra­grant. Once you can smell the fra­grance of the oil you then put in your crabs, onions, gar­lic, basil, and oregano. Sauté these until the onions are translu­cent. Then add the wine and let sim­mer for about one minute then add the toma­toes. Let them sim­mer for 2–3 hours. The longer the better!

When I was a child I can remem­ber my mother let­ting the sauce cook all day long. The fam­ily would arrive (your typ­i­cal big Ital­ian fam­ily) and every­one would take a turn stir­ring the sauce. I can still remem­ber hear­ing my mother yell out in the house “some­body mix the sauce”! If you were a kid play­ing and you heard that call to “mix the sauce” it was a sig­nal. Quickly!  That’s when you ran to the kitchen to try and get a taste! Some­times it was a spoon­ful and other times it was a lit­tle bit of sauce in a bowl and a piece of Ital­ian bread to sop up the

Blue Crabs

yummy good­ness that had been sim­mer­ing for hours. I can still remem­ber play­ing in the yard with my cousins in the sum­mer and the sauce would be cook­ing. The win­dows on the house were open and the beautiful

fra­grance of sauce in the sum­mer air. The smell of sauce in the air is a sign to non-Italian neigh­bors that Ital­ians are liv­ing in the neighborhood.

When I make this Recipe it’s usu­ally enough to feed about 12–15 peo­ple maybe more…

4 or 5 bags of Blue Crabs

Olive oil– about 3 swirls of the bot­tle around the pot or ¼ of a cup

3 cups onions

8 cloves of Garlic

¼ of a cup fresh oregano or 2 Table­spoons of dried

3 cups white wine

12 lbs. Toma­toes– If you buy them at Costco this would be 3– #10 cans, if you use organic (Bion­a­ture- glass bot­tles) this would be 12 bot­tles and if you are like me and can your own toma­toes in 12 oz. jars you would need about 24 jars. I would think though, if you are can­ning your own toma­toes then you don’t need this recipe. (LOL)

I should also men­tion that due to being mar­ried to a non-Italian I puree the onions, gar­lic, basil and oregano together so he can­not find them (and he’s ok with this). If this is a non-issue for you then you can just do a fine dice on these items.

Man­giare!

–Me

P.S.  I would love to here about some of your favorite child­hood memories/meals so please share…

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.