crabbing adventure

Every year I always mark the first day of crab season in SF. I love crab and just can’t get enough of it during the winter months. Or at least I thought I couldn’t get enough of it, until our full day crabbing extravaganza.

If you want fresh crab, you can’t do better than booking a crabbing trip out in the Pacific Ocean. We left from the Berkeley Marina, sailed through the bay, under the Golden Gate Bridge, and north along the California coastline. It was a beautiful trip that ended with a delicious crab feast.

leaving from the berkeley marina

lime point lighthouse at the north base of the golden gate bridge

under the golden gate bridge

point bonita lighthouse on the marin coast

enjoying the ride and some morning beverages

After sailing through the bay and north along the coast, the captain started circling the boat and they started bringing in the traps. I have never seen so much crab in my life. Also, bait smells really awful. But I guess not everyone thinks so.

bait = fish carcasses

brave tighe helping out with the bait

bringing in the catch

so excited for crab!

an nth of the catch

taking home dinner… for the next week

Yes. We each took home 6 giant crabs. Good thing we planned for a crab boil right after our trip. First we demolished some steamed crabs with garlic butter, then Matt made thai curry with crab. After that, Mike and Matt found way too much pleasure in hacking apart a crab to make Chinese salt and pepper crab. All in all, a great trip and a delicious feast.

single serving cheesecake

I don’t often make desserts because I don’t often eat dessert. I’d always rather save room in my belly for something savory over something sweet, but when I saw this Smitten Kitchen recipe for New York Cheesecake I just had to make it.

It needs a few hours to chill, and since I decided to make it on a whim, with only a couple hours before I had to run to a holiday party, I thought, why not make some single serving cheesecakes for the hosts? Since my springform pan wasn’t quite as tall, I knew I’d have some extra batter to experiment with, so I pulled out some mason jars to make a few more single serving cheesecakes in them.

For the single serving cakes, I went ahead and followed pretty much the same steps, making a little graham cracker crust at the bottom of the mason jar, and filling the jar to an inch below the top. To account for the smaller volume, I let them puff for 12 min at 550 degrees, but reduced the cooking time to 20 min under 200 degrees (the whole cheesecake needs an additional hour).

I didn’t land with exactly the visual effect I was going for since the cheesecake browns so quickly on the sides in the mason jars. I wanted the graham cracker crust and the layer of cheesecake batter to look more distinct from one another, but perhaps with some more experimentation with temperatures I can nail it. Still, not a bad idea. After just an hour or so of mixing, baking, and chilling, I had some single serving cheesecakes to hand over to the party hosts when I got there.

Some adjustments…

I love cheesecake, but often find it to be cloying. Deb from Smitten Kitchen adapted her recipe from Gourmet. I made a little tweaks myself. You’ll pick up on a theme. Take ‘em or leave ‘em, but here they are:

• Use powdered sugar for the crust, but HALF the amount. I found the full amount to be too sweet, and if you use granulated sugar, it doesn’t melt into the crust and you can very distinctly feel the sugar granules in the crust.
• Use only 1 cup sugar for the batter. You still get a sweet cheesecake, but a lighter, less cloying one.
• I went for a blueberry topping rather than a cherry topping. Also, to contrast with the sweet cheesecake, I only used about 2 tablespoons of sugar. I also used a full lemon to give the topping some tartness.

and here’s the whole cheesecake. yum.