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By JANET KEELER © St. Petersburg Times, published November 8, 2000 deconstructingexplanations from the inside out Stone crab clawsThere are 4,000 varieties of crabs in the world, and the famed Florida stone crab is a favorite for eating. It is fished mostly in waters surrounding Florida but can be found as far north as North Carolina and as far west as Texas. The stone crab owes its name to its hard shell and is prized for its all-meat claws, which can grow to half its weight. Unlike blue crabs, which give their lives for the sake of a human meal, stone crabs give up only their claws. Crabbers remove the claws and then throw the crab back to the sea to grow new ones. It isn't always a neat and pretty process, though, and some of the crabs die. The stone crab season in Florida is mid-October to mid-May. The off-season time allows the crab population to grow and regenerate claws, and it helps prevent overfishing. In Florida, about 4,000 people are employed in the $15-million industry. For crab lovers, the claws of the stone crab are heaven. The tender meat is darker and richer-tasting than that of a blue or Dungeness crab. All that good taste comes at a price. Expect to pay about $10 a pound for medium claws, $15 for large and $17 for jumbo. Cooking classMany salad dressing and sauce recipes call for crushed shallots, an aromatic herb of the lily family. You can crush these small, onionlike bulbs the same way you do cloves of garlic. Put them on a cutting board and smack them hard with the flat side of a chef's knife. The force will loosen the peel, and then you can give them a rough chop. This Web site cooksGetting tense about Thanksgiving? Beginning today until Thanksgiving Day, visitors to Epicurious.com's Thanksgiving hotline forum can get advice and answers from renowned chefs including Julia Child, Nathalie Dupree, Michael Lomonaco (chef at Windows on the World, New York), Alfred Portale (chef, Gotham City Bar and Grill, New York) and others. A celebrity chef is online during daytime business hours each day to help. Log on, submit a question and get personalized cooking advice in return that day or the next. You can also find out what others with turkey trepidation are asking about.
The PR folks at 3M, maker of O-Cel-O scrubbers, think the reason your kids won't help you clean the house is because the scrubbers are ugly. At least that's what their press release says. We can't agree with them completely, but we applaud their effort to make sponges more colorful with new decorator patterns: flowers, festive umbrella drinks and now seasonal snowmen and snowflakes. Now if they can just drop by and tell us when to throw them away. The sponges are about $1 each. Building a better butterLand O'Lakes has added Ultra Creamy Butter to its product line just in time for the holiday baking extravaganza. With 83 percent butterfat, the new Land O'Lakes item has even more butterfat than European-style butters. The extra fat produces a satiny texture in sauces, soups and glazes. In baked goods, the flavor is noticeably more indulgent than in cookies, cakes and bread made with regular butter. Now really healthyBac-Os, a popular soy substitute for bacon bits, has been reformulated to omit monosodium glutamate. MSG, prevalent in processed foods, is a safe but somewhat controversial flavor enhancer. Some asthma sufferers cannot tolerate the additive in their systems.
This is just one of the many "official" products of Super Bowl XXXV popping up around the Tampa Bay area as the Big Game inches closer to Raymond James Stadium on Jan. 28. E and J Gallo Winery of California is the official wine sponsor, and this specially produced bottle will be prominent at promotions leading up to the game. Constant comment"A man will be eloquent if you give him good wine." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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From the Times Taste section From the features wire |
