Sketchblog

OK, so I have been wanting to do this for some time now. I used to go crabbing/fishing with my dad as a young fella. We would go to the HEB, get some chicken necks, and load up our crab trap and check it a few hours later. This was exciting for me as a kid and well, it is still pretty fun now. Moving to San Francisco was my first time living near a major body of water (possibly) containing delicious sea life.

One day, coming home from a Saturday evening meeting a friend for a drink in Oakland, I ran into this guy on the Muni. He was this weird fat guy with a cart, 40oz, and a crabnet. I asked him what was in the bucket and there were at least a half dozen crabs in there. He said he had been crabbing right off the embarcadero. Until then, I had no idea that anyone even did stuff like that in San Francisco.

A few days later I googled something like “crabbing san francisco” and came accross Jeff’s Captivating Guide to Crab Fishing. I emailed Jeff and I emailed the California Dept. of Fish & Game. and they both told me the crabs were edible. Why go crabbing if you can’t eat them? After that, I knew I was good to go.

I decided to spend one Saturday afternoon taking a bus to the outer richmond to Gus’s Discount Fishing Tackle (the woman working there reminds me of Rhea Perlman in a good way) and then to Shanghai Dumpling King nearby. Visiting a bait & dumpling shop in the same day is actually my idea of a good time.

Maybe a month or two after that little shopping trip, I decided to actually go crabbing. I bought a bunch of chicken wings and threw them in my crab trap (with bait box!) and the wings fell out every time. I think the sea lions got them. Jerks.
Then this afternoon, after a pretty decent lunch in Berkeley, I decided to take a second crack at crabbing. I grabbed some super cheap chicken parts for bait and headed to the pier near chrissy field. It’s hard to imagine a more beautiful spot to catch crustaceans, if you ask me. See gallery!

I tried one spot for about an hour and caught plenty of seaweed and wood snags. I also attracted a sea lion or two. Jerks. I decided to head to the other side of the pier and I snagged 3 crabs with the first cast. They were all way too tiny to keep, so I sent them back to their watery environs. There were also a few Dungeness crabs which are illegal to take inside of San Francisco Bay. You have to go to Pacifica for that. I ended up catching 2 keepers and took them home.

These are Rock Crabs (Cancer antennarius) .I was conflicted weather to attempt to cook them in the Than Long/ Vietnamese style with garlic noodles or to cook them in the Blue Crab/ Cajun style that I am more familiar with. I decided that with minutes-fresh crab, there really is no wrong way to cook it.

I washed the sea-mud off my two crabby little friends and started the steamer pot. I put about 2-3 inches of water in there and added some stuff I had lying around. 1/2 bunch of celery, some bay leaves, lotsa kosher salt, 1/2 onion, an entire garlic bulb. I let all that stuff develop a nice perfume and then tosses in some waxy potatoes (yukon gold maybe?). I let them steam for a few minutes while I clarified some butter. I added an entire bulb of garlic, minced and sived it out at the end. It turns out garlic fried in clarified butter is quite delicious by itself. I mostly used it as a garnish though. Anyways, after the potatoes had steamed for about 5 minutes, I added our reluctant crustacean crab friends. They steamed for 10 minutes (maybe?), but really until they became red(er) and I just decided they were done.

I plated the food and realized that rock crabs are not called that because they live on rocks (they probably do) but because their shells are friggin ROCK HARD. I haven’t yet invested in the proper crab utensils. You know, the mini-fork and the cool shell cracker thing? I only had the primitive tools of pliers and hammer. There isn’t much about eating a crustacean that is polite. I think I like it that way. There is something very primal and human about sharing a meal of self-caught sea-animal. It feels good to see what happens to your food from start to finish. I like knowing I treated my crabs; well, before I killed and ate the bastards, of course.

Maybe next time I will try the Pacifica pier. It’s not all that far from my place and you can actually find Dungeness.

Anyways, I highly recommend this activity. There were at least 20-30 other crabbers around when I was doing my thing, so I am not some lone crazy person. I highly suggest you contact me, and we can go crabbing. Why not?

link to flickr gallery detailing this special moment.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS