Our friends the Blume’s hale from NOLA (New Orleans Louisiana), and boy do they know how to cook! We recently put our heads together during crab season, and decided it was time for a good ol’ fashioned crab boil. In the Blume’s old neighborhood, blue crabs are king, in our ‘hood, it’s Dungeness all the way. So we met somewhere in the middle (that somewhere would be 99 Ranch Market in Pleasanton, this place is amazing!), and went a little overboard on the seafood.
Live Dungeness at 99 Ranch Market
We wanted everyone to feel at home, so we got a bit of everything…Dungeness AND Blue crab (we found them both live!), jumbo gulf shrimp, a pair o’ still kickin’ lobster, crawdads (not so live), and of course, some okra. It was a shopping event to remember and we hadn’t even started cooking yet.
Crustacean Alert! Blue & Dungeness Crab, Crawdads, Lobster & Shrimp
For the crab boil, we threw everything in a huge pot o’ boilin’ water: corn on the cob, red potatoes, onion, lemon, garlic, artichoke, salt and pepper, and of course, a bag or two of Zatarain’s Crab Boil.
It’s a crab boil with all the fixin’s!
Oops, don’t forget the crab.
Fresh off the California Coast – Dungeness Crab
We made an awful mess of their kitchen, but well worth it. We decided for next season, it would be necessary to get a big gas burner for out of doors and really do things right. It was a bit too cold to rollout the newspaper on tables outdoors for the gang to crack and eat at the same time, so a few of the fellas did the crustacean crackin’ outside, and brought it ready to eat inside..
You may have read about my foray into okra last summer, the only kind of okra we didn’t cook was fried. Well, we took care of that! The fried okra was absolutely delicious, and really easy, again, thanks to Zatarain’s seasoned Fish-Fri, Crispy Southern. We had every burner going on the stove, so we brough in the electric frying pan to get the job done.
Crispy fried okra
Just toss the sliced okra rings in the Fish-Fri and into the hot oil, voilà! Delicious crunchy little morsels that melt in your mouth, and to dispel the myth to those in California that don’t eat okra, it wasn’t slimy at all!
The only thing we didn’t need Zatarain’s for was the dirty rice, our Southern friends whipped up a batch from scratch, with a dash of Tony Chachere’s! (I cheat at home and do use Zatarain’s Dirty Rice in a box, I’m from California after all.)
We really didn’t use any recipes for this meal, just threw it all together. I couldn’t write fast enough as Deana was making her dirty rice, there were too many pots and pans boilin’, I’ll get that recipe next time! We served the crustaceans with pounds of melted garlic butter, spicy cocktail sauce and my family’s thousand island crab dressing. This was definitely a meal to remember, and to repeat!
Laissez le Bon temp rouler…in California!
Nancy