Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Images from Roasted Dungeness Crab with Orange Dipping Sauce

A feast for the eyes!












Oven Roasted Dungeness Crab with Orange Dipping Sauce

Good Wednesday morning foodies. It's a slow start for me today, I can't seem to wake up! Last night I made Oven Roasted Dungeness crabs with orange dipping sauce. I made just the legs of the Dungeness this way, and the body meat I threw into an Alfredo sauce that went into the freezer for dinner some other night. Yay for planning ahead!
My camera man/ Sous Chef/boy was cool enough to use the awesome new pasta press to make home made noodles to have with the crab. I would have liked to serve it over a green salad or something like that, but he was DIEING to try it out and hand made pasta is always friggen awesome. I won't turn down home made pasta/help because I'm not insane...(no comments from the peanut gallery on that one please)thankfully everything turned out excellent.
We both enjoyed the orange dipping sauce so much I went back to the stove and made a bowl of it to bring to the dinner table. What we had drizzled on the crab was never going to be enough. I even used the reduction to dip my bread into. I wish I would have had enough of it to freeze some for later use. That would be an awesome marinade for a lot of different seafood dishes.
Enough of my rambling...I do that when I'm tired.
Here is the video and the recipe for last night's seafood adventure! Later today, I'll be downstairs in front of the Lobster Gram warehouse preparing our NEW Angus Steak Burgers, our Giant 7-8 oz Bratwurst and Giant 7-8 oz Hot dogs for the office. It's another one of our famous BBQ days and that's always a blast. I'll definitely have some great pictures to share with you all from that! Happy Eating foodies!


Ingredients
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
1/4 cup olive oil (Use Orange)
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon minced shallot
1 1/2 teaspoons dried crushed red pepper
|2 large Dungeness crabs, cooked, cleaned, and cracked (about 4 1/4 pounds)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme, divided
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley, divided
1/2 cup blood orange juice or regular orange juice
1 teaspoon finely grated blood orange peel or regular orange peel

Directions
Preheat oven to 500°F. Melt butter with oil in heavy large ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Stir in garlic and green onion. Add crabs. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon chopped thyme and 1 tablespoon chopped parsley over crabs. Stir to combine.
Place crab legs in oven dish and pour melted butter mixture over crab. Roast crabs until heated through, stirring once, about 12 minutes. When Crabs are roasted, pour crab drippings from roasting dish back into the skillet you used before and add orange juice and peel to same skillet; Add the other tbs of Thyme and Parsley. Boil until sauce is reduced by about half and serve drizzled over crab and along side it for dipping.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Weekend Adventure:Cooking Crayons

Hello friends and foodies! It's crazy that it is Monday already...these weekends seem to pass by with amazing speed! I had a great weekend, but there was a lot of running around and things to take care of.
Sunday was my Nephew's First Birthday so there was a little party for him and the family. He was such a little cutie, but had NO interest in his smash cake. I think that was the first baby I have ever seen ignore a cake in front of it! Unfortunately, I forgot my camera in the office and was unable to take any pictures. Have a 2nd Birthday party next weekend for another Nephew, so I'll get another shot at sharing some family photos.
Saturday I spent my day shopping with the boy for birthday gifts and creating the special gifts for the little guys. With them turning 1 and 2 respectively, we wanted to do something for them that will help them develop skills that are overlooked in the early years. Being too little for books (Can't wait til' they start reading!) we decided to go with musical and artistic gifts to nurture their creative sides. The final choice...a Playschool Tap-a-Tune and baby crayons.

The baby crayons were a HIT with the family. All of them were surprised that we came with something this kid friendly when we are the only ones without kids, and NEVER planning on having any. Making these was beyond easy and it was great to give the little guy something that was made just for him. So I guess I can include the "Recipe" for these... I wish I could include a link to wherever it was I first saw this years ago, but I don't remember anymore.

Baby Crayons
1 large box Crayola Crayons ( I chose the 96 color pack)
1 cupcake baking tray with 12 cups
12 Foil Cupcake wrappers (not paper, wax will melt through)

Directions
Peel labels off completely off the crayons.
Line the cup cake tray with foil wrappers. Break the crayons into quarters and drop them into the bottoms of the cupcake cups. If you like you can mix colors as seen in the image above, or keep the different shades of colors in the same cup to keep them more uniform (I did it this way to help them start learning their colors). Put cupcake tray into a 350 oven for about 10 minutes. When crayons are nearing the end of their reformation, the top of them will be flat and shiny. After you see this happen to all the cups, let them sit in the oven for another 5 minutes to allow all the air bubbles to escape. Remove from the oven to cool for at least one hour before removing liners. Once that is done, you will have crayons that look a lot like colorful peanut butter cups, but they will be perfect for little hands to be creative with!