(This piece is part of the oyster chapter in the upcoming Hugging The Coast book.)

Oysters are, by design, dissuasive.  Everything about them says ‘Go away. Eat something else’.

Unlike clam or scallop shells, which can be quite pretty, oyster shells are gnarly, butt-ugly, and unpromising. Oysters can also be absurdly contentious to open, and they’re outright gooey on the inside when you do. Why, it seems, would anyone want to put something so nakedly antagonistic in their mouth?

Was it “a brave fellow what first et an oyster”? Oh no, that was one truly hungry hominid. If there had been a lizard or an artichoke or a termite nest or absolutely anything around that even vaguely resembled food, do you think this poor starving knuckle-dragger would have wasted time banging on gnarly, butt-ugly mollusks? I think not.

Growing up, I didn’t even have to meet an oyster face to face in order to be dissuaded. My entire childhood experience with oysters amounted to once asking my mother, after she’d come home from a dinner party where they’d been served, what eating a raw oyster was like. She told me it was, quote, “like swallowing a big wad of snot.” No further questions, your honor.

As an adult, I ate plenty of oysters: smoked, stewed, Rockefeller-ed, etc., including one very memorable, very gently deep-fried panko-crusted Japanese version. But never, ever raw. I just couldn’t bring myself to voluntarily order a plate of Snot Wads on the Half-Shell and then, of course, have to eat them — in public, no less (unlike some people, I was raised to believe that snot eating is a private matter, best reserved for quiet, reflective, and solitary moments.)

But I’d read so much eloquent waxing about the sensual glories of raw oysters from otherwise credible belletrists, I knew I had to be missing out. Some writers even made the whole thing sound kind of refreshing: lifting an iced shell, spritzing it with lemon and a dash of Tabasco, tilting it back and swallowing the cool/tart/spicy oyster in a gulp. It sounded bracing and briny, in a Clamato Bloody Mary sort of way.

My thoughts began to run to casual tropical fantasies, like imagining myself at a palm-thatched stand, eating a dozen freshly shucked specimens right off the playa of shaved ice, savoring the contrast of the cold shell against my sun-warmed lips as I let the sweet, salty delicacy slip down my grateful throat…

Then, unfortunately, my casual tropical fantasies and I ran smack into Ali-Bab.

Ali-Bab, AKA Henri Babinsky wrote the fascinating, extravagantly opinionated, and very French Encyclopedia of Practical Gastronomy in 1906. Remarkably, his descant on the subject of oysters, though written over a hundred years ago, still has the power to nauseate (italics mine):

“Here is the way of the oyster lovers, who feel that a good oyster deserves to be loved for itself.

Have them opened, but only just at serving time. Select your favorite oysters, plump, fleshy ones, and make sure in each case that the oyster is alive, by testing its reflexes. This is an infallible sign which cannot fool you.

Then, gently remove it from the shell, bring it immediately to the mouth, all naked, without any other accompaniment, and, at once, with one bite, pierce the liver. If the subject responds in the manner you expect of him, your gums should immediately be bathed and your mouth flooded with juice.

Remain like that a moment and then slowly swallow the juice and continue chewing and swallowing the mollusk. Then spark yourself with a swallow of good dry white wine, eat a mouthful of dark bread, either buttered or not, to neutralize the taste buds of the tongue so that you will be ready to enjoy the next oyster.”

After reading that harrowing passage, I had to spark myself with jumper cables, swallow a bottle of plonk, and neutralize the cells of the brain by eating a mouthful of Zoloft and huffing a handful of uncapped Sharpie markers. Only then did the urge to gouge out my eyes with a shrimp fork for having ever read it subside.

It’s not old Hank’s fault, though. He was French, and consequently had that unique French attitude toward food, i.e., absolute cold-blooded ruthlessness. Of course he’d have no qualms about making certain that an oyster was totally awake for the experience of having its liver pierced, just so the oyster could spurt the maximum amount of gum-bathing “juice” in that precious moment before it was slowly eaten alive.

Why would he? This, after all, was the man who shared recipes for Roast Saddle of Fawn, Larks in Shrouds, and my personal favorite, Ortolans in Sarcophagi, which involves (I kid you not) drowning — literally — a dozen tiny songbirds in aged cognac, stuffing them with pureed foie gras, and cooking them inside twelve large, hollowed-out Perigord truffles, making it not only morally repugnant but also, at least in the present time, one of the most expensive dishes imaginable.As if that weren’t decadent enough, the recipe also calls for three thrushes to be roasted and crushed in a meat press — just to enrich the sauce. Oh, by the way, this is an appetizer we’re talking about.

But as you might imagine, I was in even less of a hurry after that to be in the same room with a raw oyster, much less eat one of the bile-spewing pustules. No amount of fresh-squeezed lemon or Tabasco would ever take the taste of Ali-Bab’s lurid, appallingly graphic description of the “way of the oyster lovers” out of my mouth. It would haunt me to the grave and/or to any seafood restaurant I would ever visit, of that I was certain.

And yet I knew, without doubt, that the day of reckoning was coming…

(Photo Credits: Sittin’ by the Dock of the Bay, Piggin’ Out by Amoeda, Three Dozen Oysters by Kent Wang, Deep Seafood Cafe - Lunch by VirtualErn, Orange and Oyster Parking by DonovanHouse)

Please join us tomorrow to read our article, New Year’s Eve Dinners Around the World, a culinary remembrance of the last meal of 2008.

(This piece is part of the shrimp chapter in the upcoming Hugging The Coast book.)

Years ago, while living in Upstate NY, I innocently took what turned out to be a life-altering trip to the supermarket. I couldn’t know it then, but getting my ass kicked by shrimp would be the event that set me on the path to Seafood Enlightenment.

It all began with a small sign above the frozen seafood cooler:

“SPECIAL: 5 lb Boxes of Jumbo Shrimp — $2.99 lb”

What a deal! Only a fool would pass it up! And since I was clearly not a fool,  I left the supermarket that day with not one but two boxes and a nascent plan to invite some friends over for a weekend get-together, just so I could wow them with my largesse – and then amaze them with the story of my uncanny shopping acumen.

There was only one minor speed bump: they were “head-on” shrimp.

‘Well, so what?’ I thought. Sure, I’d never dealt with whole shrimp before, but I’d always heard that shrimp were much more flavorful when cooked intact, so their head-on status was a good thing, a bonus, an opportunity! And, being an old semi-pro in the kitchen, I doubted I’d have a  problem with the heads. It wasn’t like shrimp had sad, soulful, guilt-inducing eyes that would stare at me accusingly as I lowered them into the pot. These were “head-on” shrimp, fer cryin’ out loud, not “head-on” veal.

I also knew that when it comes to aquatic ingestibles, the Chinese – those warrior-poets of the kitchen – always try to shorten the distance between water and wok, between sea and seasoning.

A restaurant I frequented off Canal Street in NYC’s Chinatown had an entryway lined with bubbling tanks of future entrees: fish, frogs, eels, crabs, turtles, some furry-looking tubular sea critters, and oodles and oodles of live and very lively shrimp. If you placed an order (or, from your future entrees’ perspective, handed down its death sentence) for the Sizzling Shrimp with Salted Peppers, a dripping netful of teaming shrimp would be rushed to the kitchen where they would join the Choir Invisible and a flurry of fiery peppers for a short stay in Wokville.

And oh, the magnificent crunchy salty spicy sweetness of those shrimp! Nothing pre-peeled, pre-packaged or pre-anything could ever approach them. Their succulence, I firmly believed, must have been due to the fact that they had been, until literally minutes before, alive, kicking, and firmly “head-on”. Of course, they arrived at table sans tete, but surely it didn’t involve more than a quick post-wok chop?

At least, that’s what I was thinking as I pulled the boxes out of the fridge that Saturday evening. I’d settled  my guests in the living room, where they were enjoying little snacky things and a crisp, cool Australian white as a prelude to the coming feast. All I had to do was boil and peel the shrimp. Sure, ten pounds was a lot, but I’d peeled thousands of shrimp before and I’d gotten pretty quick. This “head-on” thing wouldn’t present a problem, either; it was just an additional step in the process. It wasn’t like I had to, you know, kill the shrimp personally; they’d already been dispatched to their aquatic afterlife. How bad could it be?

It was bad. Very, very bad.

My head-on bargain turned into ten pounds of living hell, or as I referred to it afterward (when I could finally speak about it), the Never-Ending Jumbo Shrimp Death March. I’d like to spare you the gory details, but seeing as this is a cautionary tale (and seeing as I have a perverse mean streak), I can’t.

For the uninitiated (which I was), shrimp with their heads on can look a lot less like something potentially yummy and a whole lot more like ocean-dwelling insects, which when you think about it… wait, no, let’s not think about it. They have, for instance, lots and lots of legs and long, whip-like antennae. Hundreds of them, it seems. Each. They also have big black eyes that are literally beady and bear a disturbing resemblance to good caviar. (In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if some enterprising  but unscrupulous person with enough shrimp heads at their disposal might try to pass off … no, wait, let’s not think about that either.)

Unpleasant as the little beasties were to look at, I eventually manned up, rinsed them off, and dumped them into the briny deep of bubbling Old Bay. While picking extra limbs and such out of the colander, I tried to focus on how abundant-bordering-on-decadent ten pounds of Spiced Jumbo Shrimp with Remoulade Sauce was going to look on a serving platter, what a great deal it was, what a clever and generous host I would be…

Then I lifted the lid to stir the pot – and was horrified to discover that most of those beady black eyes had come unstuck and were swirling around in the water like the Tapioca of Doom.

If I’d had any sense at all, I would have regarded it as an omen. I briefly entertained the idea of dumping the whole mess in the backyard for the raccoons, who might have been a bit suspicious at what appeared to be a peace offering from The Crazy Guy with the Broom who always rudely interrupts their al fresco dining at Cafe Hefty, but they’d get over it:

Raccoon 1: “What’s with Crazy Guy tonight? He looks more demented than usual.”

Raccoon 2: “Beats me, pal. Hey, did you try the beady black things yet? They’re amazing! They sort of burst against the roof of your mouth in little briny explosions.”

Raccoon 1: “Wow, you’re right! I’m gonna go check the trash bags for some lemon and minced hard-cooked egg.”

Raccoon 2: “Cool! See if you find any toast points in there too, will ya?”

But then I thought, ‘Screw the raccoons. I’m going to be a clever and generous host, dammit!’

Naturally, things went from bad to worse when it came time to dress out the intimidating pile. I was under the impression that all one had to do was cut off the head, split the back, and zip off the shell. Well, not surprisingly, I was wrong. I found that if I didn’t want to waste half the shrimp, I’d have to work a knife awkwardly under the gill plate (yes, shrimp have gill plates.) And, also previously unknown to me, shrimp have sharp pointy bits front and rear. I knew they ostensibly served some useful evolutionary function, but it began to seem like they were really just there to poke little holes in my fingertips and jam painfully under my nails like bamboo splints.

But the worst, most gag-inducing aspect of the whole episode was the mysterious creamy pink goo. I didn’t know what it was, but with every cut the god-awful stuff oozed out of the heads onto my white cutting board. It might have been a delicacy for all I knew, but whatever it was it nauseatingly resembled the kind of sauce one might make for, you know, boiled shrimp. And, looking at the veritable mountain in front of me, I knew that by the end I’d probably be ankle-deep in revolting pink goop.

The way I saw it, I had two options: one was to leave the house by the back door, never to return; the other was to stoically (and with the aid of a few spine-straighteners from a bottle of dark rum) continue the loathsome enterprise. Since I wasn’t really eager to start traveling by boxcar, living in refrigerator cartons, and telling beery, maudlin stories to bartenders about how I used to have a wife and a house and a dog until that accursed day that I foolishly bought two boxes of shrimp on sale at the Price Chopper, I decided to soldier on.

The beheading went on for what seemed like hours, relentlessly, mechanically, as if Henry Ford had been put in charge of streamlining the French Revolution. It was a different world out in the living room, though. A world of laughter and Sauvignon Blanc and blissful ignorance of the bleak human (not to mention decapod) condition just beyond the kitchen door. In my morbid and increasingly inebriated frame of mind, I began to think of my merry, canape-munching, so-called friends as a bunch of insensitive, good-for-nothing spongers. ‘Bastards,’ I muttered to myself as I chopped, “Insensitive, (whack!) good-for-nothing, (whack!) sponging, (whack!) bastards!”

At some point, I think I started to imagine myself as one of those haunted, hollow-eyed Poe characters, the kind that shouts things like “Fools! How can you laugh? Do you not know that Death is here among you? He is the founder of the feast!”  But when I began to feel a fit of maniacal giggles coming on, I knew that perhaps I’d better reestablish a grip on the old sanity, or else I was likely to leave the shrimp in the kitchen, drop a platter of severed heads onto the coffee table, and shout, “HURRY UP AND EAT ‘EM BEFORE THEY ROT!!! BWAA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!

Which, of course, was not exactly what I’d planned for this weekend get-together. So I shook the demons, spiders, and any remaining hubris from my head and finished preparing what I’d really intended: a meal that would bring people together in fun and friendship around a big ol’ platter of delicious food served with appreciation and genuine affection. Then, I shouldered the load, left the kitchen (and the memories of carnage) behind, and joined my thoughtful, kind, and generous friends in the living room.

“My God, you look pale! Are you alright?” my friend Cheri said, jumping up to help.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, setting down an abundant-bordering-on-decadent platter of Spiced Jumbo Shrimp with Remoulade, “Long day.”

All in all, things did turn out pretty well. The attendees ooh-ed and ahh-ed over what I’m told were some truly magnificent shrimp; I blamed my lack of appetite on noshing in the kitchen. A fine time was had by all, including me, as the company of good friends and several more bottles of wine almost — almost — made me forget the horror show in the other room. (Which, as I found out much later, was wholly unnecessary: you don’t cut shrimp heads off, you pinch them off — a very quick and easy process. Duh.)

After the party, feeling docile and a bit conciliatory, I went out to the backyard and set a big platter of shrimp heads and leftover appetizers on the back step for my old foes, the raccoons.

“Chow down, fellas,” Crazy Guy said into the darkness, in the direction of the four watchful eyes under the garden shed, “No broom tonight.”

If you enjoyed this article, you might also enjoy these other interesting posts:

• Video: How to Peel and Devein Fresh, Local Shrimp
• The “Hand-To-Mouth Meals” Series: Shrimp
• A Soft-Shell Saga: Tarantula Sandwiches to Go
• 7 Pasta Shapes I Have Loved (Plus 1 That Made Me Gag)
• Gut Instinct: Trusting Yourself in the Kitchen

(Photo Credits: Chinese Chef by Dave Kliman, My Armory: Chinese Cleaver by Panduh, Raccoons by Brendan Lally, Flame by Skyco)

Please join us tomorrow for our recipe for Seared, Wild Mushroom Dusted Shrimp & Scallops With Spaghetti Squash, Porcini Oil, & Grana Podano Shavings, as part of our special Holiday Shrimp Week Series.

“…Taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”
–Marcel Proust

Why are many of us afraid to trust ourselves in the kitchen?

Is it because we’re afraid to fall flat on our faces, figuratively or literally, if we combine the wrong ingredients or flavors?

Is it because we’re employing dangerous objects (knives, choppers, etc), volatile elements (intense heat, gas flames, microwaves, boiling liquids), and risky
chemical processes – all in a non-laboratory setting?

(After all, chemistry class was a properly equipped and supervised environment, and we still set off the occasional window-shattering explosion, didn’t we? Alright, well, maybe that was just me.)

Or is a big part of the problem the fact that recipes vary so wildly in specificity that some are like Alchemy (”Taketh a fyne pinche of Agrimony mixed withe a dogsboot of Aqua Tappia and setteth the whole upon a proper flayme until well borkked…”), while others are like Particle Physics?

It’s hard to lay blame, since there is no one universal formula or template for recipe writing. The result really depends on how much effort the cook is willing to invest in getting it ‘right’, i.e., comprehensible and reproducible.

Having written a lot of recipes for this site as well as for contests, I’ve come to respect how very tricksy the process can be. Scribbling down cryptic notes along the way is fine, but when it comes to writing the actual recipe that others will follow, the accurate recollection and description of each step in the process is critical. Ambiguity is the Enemy. But, like crabgrass and spam emails, ambiguity can’t be eliminated — only minimized.

It’s also surprisingly time consuming: it can take five times as long to resolve the grammar and phrasing problems in describing how to make the dish than it does to make the dish itself. So much depends, to paraphrase William Carlos Williams, upon whether the red wheelbarrow is glazed before or after the white chickens go in the oven.

Still, even if an earnest cook follows a recipe exactly, they can never produce exactly the same result. There are far too many variables. Quality, size, and freshness of ingredients can make a huge impact; a ripe, dew-kissed heirloom you pick from your garden will have a profoundly different effect on your Caprese than a mealy, crinkle-wrapped abomination from the supermarket even though they are both, technically speaking, tomatoes.

Equipment is another random factor. What exactly does “medium-high” mean when stovetops and cookers can be gas (natural, propane, butane, etc.), electric, magnetic induction, and who knows what else? Maybe Viking is developing a cold fusion or hydrogen fuel cell stove as I write this.

Ovens are also notorious for wild variations in temperature, which makes baking doubly difficult since factors like ambient humidity can negatively affect flour, baking powder, et al. Add in geographical location, altitude, weather, Standard vs Imperial vs Metric vs Archaic measurements, etc., etc., and it’s no surprise that many a valiant attempt at recipe standardization over the years has collapsed like a dropped souffle.

But just as there are many different recipe styles, there are many different kinds of cooks with many different skill and comfort levels in the kitchen. Some of us require recipes to be as exacting as moon-shot trigonometry; others see recipes like the melody of an improvisational jazz piece – a jumping-off point.

When it comes to reading others’ recipes, I must confess I belong to the latter group. In the many places I’ve lived over the years, I can’t recall ever keeping cookbooks in the kitchen. They’re far more likely to be in a bookcase in the living room (within easy reach of a comfy chair) or piled up on my nightstand; I see them more as pleasure reading than instruction manuals. And if an inspiring recipe makes me want to jump up and cook, nine times out of ten I leave the book behind and just wing it.

Wing it? What? How can I be so casual when I’ve just spent all this time describing the minefield known as recipe writing, you ask? Is it hubris? Do I think I’m some kind of Chef-Savant with weird talents and a photographic memory?

Hardly.

I’ve just learned to trust myself.

In the movie Lawrence of Arabia, Lawrence is seen casually and stylishly extinguishing matches with his fingertips. One of his colleagues tries it and burns himself. “Ow!” he yelps, “That hurts! What’s the trick?”

“The trick,” said Lawrence, “is not minding that it hurts.”

So too with recipes. Ambiguity is inevitable. Variables can’t be contained. And they never will. The trick is simply not to mind.

How do cooks learn to skip fearlessly off the narrow path of the tried, true, and test kitchened, and plunge headlong into the dark, mysterious, and wildly aromatic forest of improvisation? Hands-on experience is, of course, the best way to gain confidence in technique. But trust in oneself goes deeper and gives more: in combination with technique, it imbues cooks with the courage to create, explore, and innovate. But to achieve it, we have to learn to recognize – and utilize – what we already know.

A good way to think about your kitchen knowledge is to imagine it as one of those Magnetic Poetry sets, the ones with the individual word tiles that you can rearrange on your refrigerator door: all of your past cooking experiences (both the successful and the not-quite), all of your preparation skills (from peeling to pan frying to papillote-ing) and all your ingredient knowledge (from the taste of salt to the scent of truffles) are like those individual word tiles. They each have distinctive attributes, but how you choose to combine them can have the effect of softening or emphasizing or even transforming their individual qualities. Wisely applied, they can create a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Like individual words arranged into poems, we can arrange our individual pieces of kitchen knowledge to craft elegant, complex, and enriching structures. But to do so, to catalyze the static and random into the meaningful and sublime, requires one very important ingredient.

That ingredient is imagination.

Imagination breathes life into the inanimate, turns words into poetry. It’s what allows us to mix, mash, and manipulate what we already know into new and exciting forms. Imagination sets the table and invites Serendipity, Inspiration, and Genius to dinner.

But imagination is a muscle that requires exercise. Before we go skipping off into the beckoning wilderness, it helps to walk the established paths while we learn to really observe the terrain. An exercise I find helpful involves taking an existing recipe and visualizing it into existence.

It works like this: as you’re reading a recipe, take the time to imagine. Start by reading just the ingredients list. Don’t read the preparation instructions. Then, picture the ingredients as they’re described (cubed, minced, shredded, etc.)

Imagine the flavors and seasonings interacting. Imagine, just from the ingredients, how the end result might taste. Try to get a clear sense of it before you move on to reading the instructions.

You can do a similar exercise with a different recipe. Don’t read the ingredients. Start by reading just the instructions. Visualize the processes and equipment. Imagine the interactions of the foods and the effects that time and temperature will have on them, how they will simmer or caramelize or rise in the oven. Picture how the end result will look and smell, and how it will look on the plate.

And if you’re ever in doubt, breathe. Your sense of smell is a valuable ally in visualization.

Ever wonder if such disparate elements as nutmeg and cilantro would work well together? Smell them, one after the other, and then together. Just relax your preconceptions, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that your brain is more than happy to help by processing the data and tossing up conclusions.

Every aroma of every ingredient and every dish we’ve ever experienced has taught us something, whether we realize it or not. Scent memory, stored in the oldest part of the brain, is intimately entwined with our sense of taste, and is legendary for its evocative powers. In other words, just by breathing, we’ve learned volumes more than we realize about food, and by extension, cooking.

The more you do this, and the more you cook, the surer you will become. In time, all your multi-sensory experiences with food and cooking will work together and you’ll find that visualizing and analysis become second nature. You’ll spot errors in recipes before you prepare them. You’ll go to restaurants and instinctively ‘reverse-engineer’ how their dishes were prepared and be able to reproduce – or reinterpret them – at home.  And, more importantly, because of what you learn you’ll be far more confident in ‘imagining into existence’ your own enriching creations.

Taste. Smell. Learn. Imagine. And don’t be afraid to experiment. Sure, you’ll make mistakes (Lord knows I still make some doozys), but bold creative experimentation is absolutely vital to innovation. Remember, every venerable old tradition began as someone’s new idea.

Be bold, be brave, and trust yourself. You’ll be just fine.

Late November in the Northeast can be surprisingly cruel. The last vestigal warmth trickles slowly out of the mid-month days and a sudden shaft of glacial cold slashes down from Canada, catching all unprepared. Oddly, by mid-December, it may again be almost pleasant, but the weeks before are often bitter and sobering.

Early Thanksgiving morning in the city can be strangely quiet. The shopping days are done. Those who cook are already long about in warm kitchens; those who don’t, sleep in. Football will be watched. Reservations will be fulfilled. Guests will drive; arrive. But not yet. It’s warm within, cold without. It’s early. There’s time.

The sun seemed pointless that morning. A simulacrum. The streets were empty as I headed to my car, caught a glimpse, turned. A ragged, filthy dog. Cantering toward me, lost, mindless. Just running.

I stopped and called. The dog stopped.

Not much more than a pup, really. No collar, abandoned. Dirty fur matted with ice. Confused, but grateful for the small gift of notice. Too sad. But the world was a blizzard of sad stories. And this – just another, smaller one.

The dog ran off, toward the intersection. It wouldn’t be long now. Hopefully quick and painless. I heard a sound. Not a rising screech of rubber, something unexpected:

I was whistling. The dog stopped.

And came back.

I wrapped her in a lap blanket, put her in my car. I drove – she slept – across states – to my home. Warmth. My wife. Warmth and Home.

A meal and a bath. A long nap on a soft pillow. So, so happy. No longer lost, our Thanksgiving spaniel.

Our now-shiny Penny.

Our unexpected treasure.

Penny has shared our adventures for fifteen years now. Her wild, exuberant, tennis ball chasing days are over: she’s old and can’t get around too well now, but she’s still the happiest, sweetest-natured dog anyone could ever hope for.

We never knew how old she was when we found her, so we decided to make Thanksgiving her birthday (not coincidentally because it’s also a day of special treats.)

She most likely won’t be with us next year, so on this day I just wanted to say Happy Birthday – and thank you – to Penny, our special friend, who was plucked from the blizzard of sad stories – and showed us how to be truly happy.

Please join us tomorrow to find out more about our recipe for Pomegranate-Infused Ginger Chicken With Sesame Scallion Dumplings as we return to our regular food blogging.

(This piece is the second part of the soft-shell crab chapter in the upcoming Hugging The Coast book. Part One, “Rusters, Busters, & Angry White Males”, will be published in an upcoming blog post.)

With his broad, friendly smile and easy laugh, Gerald Smalls just doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who could cut the face off a live crab without a second thought. He’s just too pleasant, too modest, too, well, self-effacing. But I guess ten years behind the scenes at a seafood shop can do that to a man – make him into a face-snipping, gill-slicing, shell-cracking Terminator.

But, you know, a nice one.

Gerald slid back the door to the heavily padlocked shedding room, where long, low-sided, aerated holding tanks were stacked the full length and height of the room.

Bright lights and space heaters kept the room at ideal molting temperature.

“There ain’t too many left. I hope I can find you some that’s ready.” He poked around in the nearly empty tanks, looking for the recently rubbery. Judging from the numbers that remained of the thousands that had been in residence just a week or so earlier, I had almost waited too long. Even at three bucks apiece wholesale, those teeming, peeling masses had literally flown out of this room, off to restaurants and suppliers in many states and several countries. Gerald climbed up to the last tank in the far left corner, stuck his hand in, and grinned.

“I found two for you. One of em’s nice and big, too.”

Oh goodie. A nice big one.

I should have been thrilled, but I was, as usual, somewhat ambivalent about the whole thing. To further my seafood education (and to find out what the yearly hoopla is all about), it was important that I try soft-shell crabs, and the circumstance here were ideal, since I knew exactly where these came from and that they would be prepared within minutes of leaving the water.

But there was a significant existential issue to deal with. Eating a crab whole seemed pretty barbaric. We Americans don’t eat many animals whole. The French eat little songbirds whole, but they at least have the decency to hide there shameful act behind a large napkin draped over their faces. Eating something in its entirety, without leaving bone or skin or viscera behind, was too all-consuming – literally.

What would remain of its passage on earth after I had sated my base hunger? It felt like, somehow, somewhere in the process, I would be eating its soul. Deep fried, no less.

I followed Gerald across the lot, through the back door of the seafood shop, and into a smallish room with gleaming stainless steel counters. The killing floor, I thought with a small shiver. I noticed a huge plastic bin next to Gerald’s counter with mysterious elongated creatures curled inside — headless, skinless things with flesh that was disturbingly flesh tone. My flesh tone, actually. It was like looking into a washtub full of boneless arms.

“What are those things?” I asked, trying not to sound totally creeped out.

“Sharks. Came in live this morning.”

Note to self: Don’t mess with Gerald. Gerald skins and eviscerates barrels of live sharks before most people have their second cup of coffee.

Soft-shell crabs, though, don’t pose much of a threat. The shedding process leaves them utterly docile, which is probably just as well: they may indeed look exactly like a regular crab, but they’re about as fearsome as a rubber chicken.

The limp crabs sat patiently on their bright red cafeteria tray while Gerald dug around in his knife box and pulled out a pair of red-handled scissors, just normal scissors like you would use to cut fabric. Then he picked up a crab and, with his perfectly normal red-handled scissors, snipped off its face.

“Ouch!” I said, wincing, “That can’t feel too good.”

“That crab didn’t feel a thing,” he said quietly.

I’m guessing here, of course, but Gerald is probably right. That crab stopped twitching instantly. It may have looked brutal and a touch bizarre, but the scissor method was swift and certain. Hard shell crabs should be so lucky.

He flipped up the left side of the upper shell and snipped out the gills (or lungs, or “dead man’s fingers’, as they are charmingly known), did the same for the right side, then flipped the crab over and pulled back the lower hinged part of the shell (from the pointy part down) and snipped it off. He repeated the process for the other crab, and that was that: soft-shell crabs, ready for the freezer or the fryer. Everything that was left – inside and out – was (at least theoretically) edible.

I followed Gerald past the scaling station, where Gerald’s brother, a large, soft-spoken fellow, was whizzing through a pile of sea trout with a scaling device that looked exactly like one of Doc Ock’s metal cyborg arms. It snaked down menacingly from a cylindrical motor mounted to the ceiling, and though Gerald’s brother wielded it with masterful control, I strongly suspected that if he let go even for a moment, the thing would whip around the room – blind, wild and hungry – until it found something (or someone) to scale.

I sidestepped quickly into the back entrance to the kitchen, where Gerald had deposited my dressed soft-shells at the fry cook’s station. Marvin’s Seafood not only does wholesale and retail sales, they also do a banging lunch business. From their bubbling fryers, impeccably fresh and insanely delicious-looking seafood emerges. As I entered, I spotted a basket of perfectly golden whiting fillets rising from the depths and instinctively whipped out my Canon.

“You gettin’ ready to take my picture behind the fryers?” Miss Mary said, spotting my camera. “I know you ain’t gettin’ ready to do that.”

“I, uh…well, I uh,…I was gonna ask first…”

“Oh Lord…” Miss Mary implored the heavens for patience with the peculiar. With the hint of a mischievous smile, she furrowed her brow at me with mock suspicion. “What you gonna do with the pictures?”

“They’re just for me, really. I take pictures to remind myself of things, you know, stuff I might forget.”

“Alright, then…just don’t go putting my picture in your book now.”

“Okay, I won’t. I promise. But I can write about your awesome skills, can’t I?”

She chuckled, “Well, I guess I can let you do that.”

With that settled, Miss Mary began to show me the process. She dredged the crabs in a large shallow pan of what looked like seasoned cornmeal.

“What have we got there?” I asked.

“This is our breader. Our seafood breader,” she said, pointing to a large sack of House-Autry brand (”The Choice of Southern Cooks Since 1812″) on a low shelf under the prep table. In the South, ‘breader’ is what is known elsewhere as ‘breading mix’ and is used to deep-fry chicken, shrimp, pork chops, oysters, gator tail – just about anything that’ll hold still long enough.

I bent down for a shot of the cool logo, but froze when I heard a sharp voice right behind me.

“What you doing with that camera? Why you want to know what we’re using?”

I stood up too quickly and clanged my shoulder painfully against the stainless steel  tabletop. Sympathy, however, was not forthcoming. Instead, Miss Denise gave me a look that could curdle CoffeeMate.

“I, uh… I’m just…”

“He’s a writer,” Miss Mary said in my defense.

“You’re a writer?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m not stealing secrets or anything, I swear.”

“Oh…” Miss Denise said, “Well, I guess that’s alright.”

Satisfied, if still a bit puzzled, Miss Denise went back to filling styrofoam containers with crispy fish, shrimp, hushpuppies, and french fries for the early lunch crowd. Miss Mary continued her demonstration.

“We shake them off. Then we put them in the oil. Then we do this.” She snugged a second fry basket inside the first one, sandwiching the crabs between. “That keeps them from splashing, ’cause they still got water in them.”

As my lunch-in-the-making sizzled in the deep golden oil, I pondered the circularity of their path: when the crabs first arrived at Marvin’s, they were still ‘crunchy’, since they hadn’t yet shed their old shells; when they came out of the shedding tank, they were soft. Now, coated in breader, they had gone into the fryer soft, and would come out crunchy again.

About eight minutes later they emerged, their tops a deep crimson under the appealingly irregular crust. They looked strange, like nothing I’d ever seen. But, I had to admit, they were also strangely beautiful.

“You know, Miss Mary, I’ve never had one of these.”

“Well, you’re about to now.”

“What would you put on it?” I asked.

“Nothing. I’d just eat it between the bread. Why don’t you try a piece now? Just take one of them claws.”

I hesitated for half a beat, then surprised myself by pulling off one of the larger claws and popping it into my mouth. Hot, salty, yielding – a crunch – then silky crabmeat and a burst of pure, sweet crab essence. Miss Mary watched me, expectant.

“Oh my God. Wow.”

She beamed. “They’re good, right? They don’t get fresher than that.”

Miss Denise, (who is really a sweetheart, if a bit of a pitbull to nosy strangers with cameras), packed up my crabs with four slices of white bread and a handful of mayo, tartar, and catsup packets. For my wife, I ordered some of those gorgeous whiting fillets with hushpuppies. Miss Denise filled the container with enough deep-fried goodies to feed a small Southern town. She even let me take her picture.

After Miss Denise rang me out at the register, I called out to the back of the kitchen.

“Thank you, Miss Mary.”

“You’re very welcome. Come back and see us. And, young man..?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

Miss Mary exchanged a glance with Miss Denise, as if she were about to deliver the punch line of a private joke. “I think I’ll let you put my picture in your book, if you want to.”

Back home, I lifted the lid and stared into the face of my destiny. Or, at least, into the crunchy coating where the face of my destiny used to be. But the moment had arrived; I put the “nice, big one” between two slices of the now-steamy/soft bread, sans condiment, and took a big, brave bite.

Chewing a torn-off claw was one thing; biting into the body of the thing was another. Soft-shell crabs are very meaty and almost too sweet. The texture of the carapace seems, paradoxically, alien yet overly ‘real’. There is nothing quite like it in commonplace culinary experience, but after your teeth tear through it some deep, vestigial memory sparks and you suddenly, with a shudder, recognize what you’re eating:

A bug.

A very big bug, plain and simple. Sure, it’s salty, crunchy, breaded, and deep-fried — which is certainly a mitigating circumstance since real Southern-style “breader” would make a deep-fried bowling shoe look tasty — but it’s still a bug. And if by some chance that delightful epiphany had escaped me, I was lucky enough to have an astute observer on hand.

“It looks like you’re eating a tarantula sandwich,” my wife said, between bites of a “really, really good” hushpuppy.

“Yep, sure does,” I agreed, not looking down.

“Are you enjoying it?”

“Ummm…sort of.”

She studied me while I ate. “It really does look like a spider with those legs sticking out of the sides.”

“I was trying not to think about that.”

“Oh… sorry. Would you like some of this whiting? It’s still got the skin on but it’s really good.”

“Ah, no… fish skin is just a little too real for me right now. I think I’ve had all the reality I can handle for one day.”

“Alright, well, how about one of these hushpuppies? I don’t think there’s any actual puppy in them. Or not enough to notice, at any rate.”

“No, thank you,” I sniffed, reaching for my old, reliable Balm of Gilead: Crystal hot pepper sauce,”I’ve got another tarantula to eat.”

The verdict: I can kind of understand why folks anticipate the brief soft-shell season. The purity and intensity of crab flavor is unparalleled, but for me it was a bit overwhelming.  If I’m ever offered another soft-shell crab, I’ll eat it, but I’m not sure  I’ll be going out of my way to have one again. Still, you never know. Memory is a funny thing, and I might develop a yearly craving for tarantula sandwiches. But I doubt it.

The upside: if I’m ever offered one of those crispy garlic & chili-flavored fried giant spiders in Malaysia , I might just go for it. But then again, in Malaysia I’d probably try a crispy garlic & chili-flavored fried bowling shoe.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also enjoy these other interesting posts:

• The “Hand-To-Mouth Meals” Series: Shrimp
• 7 Pasta Shapes I Have Loved (Plus 1 That Made Me Gag)
• The Four Corners of Carolina BBQ Road Trip.

Please join us tomorrow when we’ll share our recipe for Sausage and Cheese Ouroboros.