Spring is such a short-lived luxury season. There are fiddleheads, there are asparagus, and then there are crab, sea urchin and sea snails. I like them all, but I like them more because they’re so short-lived. Just three or four weeks max for my favourite sea urchins, and already the fish stall that sets up at Atwater Market Thursday-Sunday for about a month is gone. While there they gave out samples of fresh crab legs, slit openeasily with a knife (no claw cracking required) to sample. In their counter they had oursins and bourgeots (sea urchins and sea snails), the urchins raw, green, spiney, and breathing, and the sea snails steamed for 50 minutes in a giant vat behind the counter, but still in their shells.
The crab was definitely the most highly coveted item for sale, however. An older man who’d clearly been selling crab from somewhere definitely not Montreal for a long time smiled a little at customers, complimenting eyes and happily answering questions. He was definitely not a salesman, though, wandering behind the stall between the steaming cauldron and the counter almost randomly, and cutting open legs and shells when he felt like it. He had a younger assistant that made the drive with him every morning from the fishing area with the freshly caught crab, snails, and urchins, and he was the real enthusiast. About 24 years old, he had bright eyes that showed he was not the wisened fisherman. For only a month each year he took this second job driving and selling the seafood. When he talked about how delicious it was and how short the season was, we definitely saw eye to eye in a young person kind of way. No maturity, all passion.
But it’s our passion that makes it harder on us when it’s over. One week I bought a whole steamed crab (I decided not to steam it myself since it was just steamed on site 2 minutes previous) to make sushi. That’s what I do with crab. None of this fake kani kama, precooked imitation crabmeat that’s mostly farmed pollock packed with MSG.
Instead the fresh crab meat should be a little sweet and very tender. The meat I bought was a little bland, but it was local and better than anything else I could get. The second week I bought it, it was sweeter. Such is the nature of buying food that doesn’t come in a box – variation. I’m perfectly happy with that.
This is what I did with my crab:
9 sushi rolls. 7 regular and 2 inside-out* rolls with either just crab, or a mix of crab and cucumber and avocado, or crab and shrimp. (Crevettes de Matane or Nordic shrimp, of course. The local ones.)
This is how much crab meat I got from a single crab.
That’s a lot of sushi filling. It took a bit of time because I’m a stickler for getting all the flesh out of every little piece, but it’s not hard like a lobster, so it takes a lot less strength and cracking and swearing and frustration in general. By the end your whole kitchen smells like crab, but it’s sad because the smell only lasts a day. And the season only lasts a month, and there’s no way I consumed enough crab in that time.
Ingredients:
2 cups sushi rice (sushi rice is a short-grain rice that turns sticky when you cook it. You can find it at most grocery stores and all Asian specialty grocers)
1 three-inch square piece of kombu (green, thick dried kelp also available at most grocery stores)
2 cups cold water
1/4 cup plus 1 tbsp unseasoned rice vinegar
1 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cooked crab, all flesh removed (use a knife to slit it lengthwise and then press open to spoon out the flesh)
2 Lebanese (or 1 English or Japanese) cucumbers, trimmed and cut into 1/2″ x 1/2″ x 6″ matchsticks (or however you want. You can peel and seed them if you like but that’s a lot of cucumber going to waste)
1/2 avocado, sliced like the cucumber matchsticks
2 tsp sesame seeds, toasted (a few minutes in a dry skillet over medium heat until aromatic)
1 package nori sushi wrappers
Wasabi powder (mixed with a few drops of water and let stand 5 minutes until solid) or paste.
Sushi soy sauce or tamari (sushi soy sauce is a lighter soy than, say, most Chinese cooking soy sauces or other Japanese soy sauces)
Directions:
1. Soak 2 cups of sushi rice in cold water. Carefully swirl it around with your hand until the rice is cloudy. Drain it (I drain it in the saucepan in which I plan to cook the rice, and use a little fine-mesh sieve to catch any escaping grains), and soak it again in more cold water. Swirl, drain, soak. Repeat at least 3 times or until the rice water is clear. You should do this with most polished white rices to remove the starch (Basmati, Jasmine, and any long-grain whites that aren’t in a little sterile plastic American package).
2. Add 2 cups cold water to the drained rice
3. LET IT SIT FOR 30 MINUTES (but only if you have the time. It’s supposed to make the rice fluffier but you probably won’t notice unless you’re a sushi rice expert)
4. Add the square piece of kombu to the soaked rice, cover it, and set it over medium heat (or in a rice cooker. Oh I wish I had a rice cooker). You can also add a tbsp or two of sake if you happen to have any. Personally I seem to always be out…
5. Bring the rice to a boil over medium heat. When it simmers, cover it, and reduce the heat to low for 15 minutes
6. Now cut your cucumbers into matchsticks. Purists will remove the skin and seeds and make the sticks exactly the same thickness. I say chop them however you like as long as you’re okay with slightly un-spherical sushi (maki) pieces.
The Fancy (proper) Way: Now reduce the heat to its lowest point for 5 minutes. Turn up the heat for 7 seconds (wait, are we back in India??). Turn off the heat, remove from the burner, and let it sit, covered, for 15 minutes.
The Easy Way: Reduce the heat to its lowest point for 5 minutes. Remove from heat.
After the 15 minutes (or immediately if you, like me, have more important things to do with those 15 minutes plus 7 seconds of your life) and gently release the entire mould of rice from the saucepan into a large flat dish (traditional) or leave it in the pot (keeps you sane). Mix together the 1/4 cup rice vinegar, sugar and salt, and slow drizzle over the rice. Stir the rice gently (presumably with a wooden rice paddle while fanning with your other hand the hand of a sushi assistant. Who has one of those?) until all the vinegar dressing has been distributed evenly.
Then cover it with damp towels until you’re ready to roll your sushi.
Now take a little bowl, add the remaining tbsp of rice vinegar and 4 tbsp of water. Dip your fingertips in the mixture and then tap them on a dry towel. This mixture will keep the rice from sticking to your hands, so dip your fingers every time they get sticky.
Roll like this:
Take a piece of nori , place it on a sushi roller (or not) and spread 1 cup of prepared rice 3/4 of the way up the nori.
Spread it thin and all the way to the ends or the end pieces of your rolls will be rice-less.
1/3 of the way up the nori place pieces of crab, and/or 2 to 6 strips of cucumber and avocado lengthwise (depending on how thick you want your rolls. It will be easier to close thinner rolls)
Put your thumbs under the bamboo roller and use your other fingers to hold the cucumber pieces in place. Roll from the bottom of the bamboo up, until the bamboo reaches over and touches the nori or rice (It will touch the nori if you used lots of fillings and will touch the rice if you didn’t. Then hold the roll in place and tug the upper end of the bamboo roller in the middle, the left, and the right to tighten up the sushi roll. Carefully unfold the bamboo roller (just the roller, not the sushi roll), pull the partially-rolled sushi roll back to the edge of the roller, and put your thumbs back underneath with your fingers wrapped around the top of the half-wrapped roll. Repeat the rolling process again, lifting the roller over until it touches down on the other side of the roll. Pull firmly in the middle, the left and the right on the upper part of the bamboo roller while you hold the sushi roll and bottom of the roller in place. Unroll the bamboo, place the sushi roll on a cutting board and slice into 8 pieces.
A trick here is the coat the knife in vinegar water (just a little so the roll doesn’t get soggy) and don’t saw the roll when you cut. Cut once in the middle of the roll, then cut those two pieces in half. Then cut those piece in half, so you have 8 pieces. Or stick with 6 pieces since that’s easier and potentially less messy if your knife isn’t very sharp.
Serve with a little dish of soy sauce and a dollop of wasabi (either mixed in or not), and optionally some pickled ginger (but please not the over-sugared, artificially-coloured pink stuff!).
*NOTE: To make an inside-out roll, cover your bamboo sushi roller in plastic wrap so the rice doesn’t stick, and carefully tear a nori wrapper in half. Spread 3/4 cup of seasoned rice evenly over entire wrapper, sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds, and turn rice face-down on plastic-lined sushi roller. Place fillings halfway up roll and fold over as above. The ends should just touch, so pull well on each side to seal tightly.
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