May 13, 2012 Mother’s Day Northern California Brunch Dungeness Crab and Artichoke

May 13, 2012 Mother’s Day Northern California Brunch Dungeness Crab and Artichoke

Suzette had purchased two large Dungeness Crabs at Costco ($5.99/lb.) and I had purchased and cooked two artichokes on Saturday.  The crabs are sold frozen so you must allow them to thaw, which we did in the fridge overnight.

Then on Sunday at around 10:30 a.m. began preparing the Brunch.  I removed the heavy tops shell and removed the gills and yellow stuff from inside the shell and the male sex organ and washed the remaining yellow stuff away from the meat while Suzette placed ice on a medium sized steel Chinese platter.  Suzette then made a cocktail sauce with catsup, horseradish, and the juice of ½ lemon while a made a mignonette sauce with tarragon vinegar, fresh chopped tarragon leaves from the garden, mayonnaise, two minced shallots and a dash of salt and white pepper and a few drops of Worchetshire Sauce and lemon juice.  It became a thick creamy sauce.  I noticed that as we ate brunch the shallots in the sauce began to become picked as they absorbed the vinegar, which I liked very much. Next time I will make the sauce ahead of time to allow for that pickling effect of the shallots.

When the sauces were ready, we took the sauces, crabs, the artichoke, and a bottle of Gruet Blanc de Noir Champagne to the garden with a large cooking pot.  We sat and picked the crab out of its shell and ate crab with the two sauces and dipped artichoke leaves in the sauces and drank champagne and had a lovely morning in the garden.

We ended up with one cup of cleaned crab meat and a cooking pot with all the half-eaten artichoke leaves and crab pieces that we then took back into the kitchen and put on the stove with some water to boil into a lovely crab stock. 

A perfect Mother’s Day brunch without having to dress up and go out to restaurant.

Bon Appétit