Crab night July 2

Friday night dinner at home! I was planning on making some gnocchi with mushroom sauce when Nino called from Ranch 99 (shopping for Thai dinner for Saturday) saying that they have fresh crab and should he get one. Why not? He brought home a 2 lb crab.

I remembered reading about microwaving crab in the Chronicle and dug up that recipe. The comparison was between micowaving and steaming with the latter winning the taste tests. So, with our new wok (thank you Amy and Tonia) we boiled water in the bottom of the wok, put the crab in the bamboo steamer and then covered it with the wok lid. Ten minutes cooking time (water needs to be boiling when you put in the crab) and oh my god - this was amazing. Just a little bit of lemon juice and then crab was so sweet and tender.

I still made the gnocchi. The mushroom sauce consisted of fresh garlic (Cruts' garden), fresh rosemary (thank you Rebecca and Greg) and then a handful of fresh and dried mushrooms with chicken broth. I found the rosemary just a little overpowering but the dish came out pretty well. I used some fresh shitakes in there and they were great!

We opened a bottle of Cambria's Rae Chardonnay (thank you Erin and David) and it was a perfect pairing with the crab. On the scale of home cooked meals, this one was a 10!