Week 9: This Process is Not About Perfection, Clearly

Josh's Crab Stuffed Poblano Chiles

Makes 4

1 ½ pounds of crab legs (Josh prefers the large crab claws)*

4 large poblano chiles

1 egg*

½ cup panko breadcrumbs*

1 chopped Serrano chili

1 tablespoon (or to taste) of cumin*

1 tablespoon (or to taste) of chile powder

Salt and pepper to taste

Crushed red chile flakes (to taste)

2-3 tablespoons of chopped fennel*

2-3 tablespoons of chopped green onion*

Cheese-to taste-we use Casero or Cotija (sliced)*

Mix the crabmeat in a bowl with all of the above ingredients.  Set aside.

Wash chiles and cut a 3 inch rectangle out of the top, save the cut out portion.  Keeping the seeds intact, put some of the cheese in the bottom of each one.

Stuff the crab mixture on top of the cheese and pack into each poblano.  Put another slice of chees on top and replace the cut out portion to form a lid.

Bake in a 350 oven for 25 minutes with a foil cover.  Remove foil and bake for another 20 minutes uncovered.

* items changed for convenience not for quality, all exchanges slightly compromised the wondefulness of the original recipe. But WTF.

 

This blog is not about perfection. This blog is about trying to consciously make better choices, exploring the reasoning behind Pollan's madness and when and why it does not work in my life. It did not work yesterday.  To start, I ended up using canned crab.  Canned crab, in addition to crab, contains citric acid (used as a preservative), calcium disodium edta (used in crabmeat to retard crystallization), sodium pyrophosphate (used as a buffer and emulsifier) and sodium sulfite (to prevent discoloration).

Why not just swoop on over to the next closest grocer and buy my regular king crab legs? I buy them about once every month or so to eat with lemon or a little miso salad dressing. Because. I flew in Sunday afternoon from Detroit and boy, were my arms tired. I worked a long week and then the entire weekend. Good work, but work nonetheless. I was released to work from home early Monday afternoon by KT, my boss-ish and a really good human. At any rate, on the way home I ended up at the ghetto Von's very close to my house and even though it has improved in contents and presentation in the last few years, it is still not the best market. But it is the closest market. I wanted a shopgasm at the hip and groovy loft local Ralph's downtown at 8th and Flower but a GD CHP made me miss my exit by not letting me move over to the right on the 101 heading north. Bastard.  Anyway, in the middle of grocery shopping a tsunami of fatigue hit, it was all I could do to grab a few more items and get home before narcolepsy set in.  I had great eggs at home from the yup-mart...Nutri-Fresh Fertile Eggs from Chino Valley Ranchers.  Locally produced, a blurb from their website,

The hens that produce our Nutri-Fresh Fertile eggs are fed the same diet as our Veg-a-Fed and Humane Harvest (diet with added vegetable seed, grain, soybean, and limestone meal, we have eliminated the need for fish and animal by-products that are commonly used for commercially produced eggs) producing hens. These hens however, have some roosters living along side of them and with their help produce naturally fertilized eggs. We never use artificial insemination for our fertile eggs, only the way nature intended. These fertile eggs are produced in both white and brown and are packaged in the same recycled cartons as the rest of our products.

Non-organic fennel, I used more than the called for three tablespoons. I wanted some crunch and some lift so I added about .5 cup.

Maybe 5 TBS of only the green parts of the green onions. Below, see my iPhone. I usually read Barbie's recipes from my iPhone while cooking. She always sends them as attachments.

I threw in two of the Chino Valley Rancher Eggs, one didn't seem to be enough to really hold the mixture together. Out of cumin, I used instead cayenne and ancho chile powder. And also, out of breadcrumbs I tossed in about two tablespoons of plain flour for a little volume.

These poblanos were gorgeous. 

I couldn't figure out why, at a grocery store in a latino neighborhood, that a chile I recognize as a poblano was actually labeled pasilla, until I got home and read this thread on Chowhound. I do know, from working at a trendy Tex-Mex restaurant in Sacramento in the 1980's, that a pasilla is not too spicy to eat stuffed and roasted. Now I know poblanos and pasillas are one and the same.

And then there's the cheese choice. Le sigh.  I forgot to buy cheese in my state of abject exhaustion.  And we didn't have cheese at home. We have a cheese product. D likes Kraft fat-free processed cheese slices, everything this week of eating is against. Fat-free, preservatives, over-processed, over-packaged, over-etc.  And one thing the ghetto Von's has going for it is an abundance of beautiful Mexican cheeses. Major Food Rules fail. Nevertheless, I placed a few slices down on the bottom of the peppers.

Next I stuffed the peppers with the crab mixture.  If you have small hands like me, you can really get in there stuffing all the pointy ends and crevices with crab and whatnot.  That was fun.

These turned out delicious and super conservative calorie-wise.  A couple caveats.  Caveat #1: Do not bother with the fake cheese. I couldn't taste it nor detect it texture wise in the outcome. Get some delicious Mexican cheese or even a spicy jack. Or don't bother.  Caveat #2: In my oven the cooking time was not sufficient. Mine turned out about 10 minutes too crispy. Maybe Josh and Barb's oven is a little hotter than mine. Josh's were just the right balance between a touch of crispy freshness and roasted soft velvety chile. I wanted mine a hair more roasted.

Despite it all, they were easy to make and super good. We ate these while drinking a Zotovich Family 2006 pinot noir from Santa Rita Hills.  Personally, I suggest you get Jeff from Rosso to get this for you.  Now, onto week 10!