crab, Crab, CRAB, CCCRRRRRAAAAAAAAABBBBBBBBBB!!! (and LOTS of tequila)

Last weekend was the crab party. 175 lbs of crab. 140+ people. 30 lbs of smoked pork. Over 9 liters of really fine tequila. Home brew. Delicious food. Awesome company.

This was Crabtacular IV: The Boiling. Beyond being bigger than ever, the party achieved a couple of additional milestones. More crab than ever at 175 lbs of live dungeness. Corporate sponsorship in the form of weenie roasters and amazing tequila.

And I didn’t take a single photo. There were far, far more capable photographers attending than I and they took some amazing shots.

I owe a lot of people a huge thank you. Ben Holt for helping to engineer the massive tarps that we hung over the backyard (and for tying all the knots) — lowest spot was 8 feet, making it feel like a whole outdoor room had been added to the house. Duncan & Pinar for taking this amazing set of pictures (including the one seen at left). Buzz Anderson grabbed some great shots, including an awesome shot of myself with Guillermo Erickson Sauza and a crab.

And, of course, to Christine– my awesome wife and co-host of the party. Could not have thrown such an amazing party without her.

And, of course, a huge thank you to everyone who came to the party!

Crab was the center piece of the party. Lots and lots of crab. While most of the crab was served boiled, a number of folks made all kinds of delicious crab recipes or combined crab with other foods in delicious combinations. Bacon wrapped jalapeno peppers stuffed with crab anyone?

We were honored by the presence of Guillermo Erickson Sauza, Julio Bermejo of Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant (the best tequila bar on the planet), and Lilianna Camarena Bermejo.

Guillermo shared many bottles of Los Abuelos with us. Los Abuelos is an awesome tequila, as I have mentioned before.

Lily brought a bottle of El Tesoro Añejo. Delicious tequila. Whereas Los Abuelos makes my favorite reposado, El Tesoro makes my favorite Añejo — smooth, with just a slight bit of peppery spice. Delicious. And that is the original label — not generally available in the US.

I also broke open my 5 liter barrel of tequila that had been aging in my garage for 21 days. As it was Herradura Blanco Suave, it was already rested for 40 days at the distillery. Given that I had it in a new barrel with a heavy char, it picked up considerable color and flavor for only having rested for three weeks. It is excellent stuff.

As rain was likely (and it did sprinkle all day), Ben and I constructed a tarp based covering over a good 50% of the back yard. Attached to the house such that the backyard would truly be a dry extension of the main room of the house. As the yard was a bit soft, I picked a whole bunch of astroturf from Home Depot and rolled that out under the ad-hoc tent.

Worked beautifully! Ours is not the largest house and, while crowded, there was always open space into which folks could escape.

On Sunday, Ben and I tore down the backyard. We cleaned some crab and I made crab cakes using this simple recipe. Damned easy to make. I chose to deep fry the cakes as I know have a professional class small fryer (thanks to my totally awesome wife Christine). The key, though, was to add a bit of meyer’s lemon to the cakes and then to create a dip of a home made bbq sauce (thanks to Ben’s awesome wife Abbie) combined with a little chili sauce and madras curry powder. Delicious.

I’m betting I could make a killer smoked pork cake…

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 4th, 2007 at 3:01 am and is filed under Entertainment, Life, Tequila. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.