The Crappy Crabby Season

We’re tailing off the peak of Dungeness crab season here in the Bay Area, and it wasn’t much of a season, according to reports. Very little crab could be found, and we didn’t have an oil spill to blame this time.

But fishing is cyclical, so we’re just at the down side of the crab reproductive cycle. Hopefully in the next few years, we’ll have an abundance of crab.

Fresh crab is one of the easiest things to prepare because you really want to use very minimal ingredients so you can just enjoy the sweet flavor of the crab meat. I got a Dungeness crab awhile ago (not sure if it was local or from the Pacific Northwest), and recalled a recipe I did once when I brought some crabs over to my friend Vera’s home and found out she doesn’t like ginger. (I know, she’s Chinese and doesn’t like ginger! I think we should take her Chinese membership card back! Ha!) So I couldn’t do my typical preparation of crab, which is just a ginger stir-fry. Instead, I put some black bean sauce in the wok and it actually turned out really good. So here’s the recipe below. Enjoy!