Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider Crab

As of today I have my own Internet connection and I can't tell you how good it feels. Service ran especially late tonight so just a few notes before I pass out. Black truffle season is over. We've got the very last of it as a finely chopped garnish here and there. Now it's the season of morels, asparagus, crayfish, and araignee - which literally means spider in French but in this case it's araignee de mer - spider of the sea or spider crab. The bodies are about the size of a softball - but oblong so like a small football - and the legs fairly spindly - with not very big claws. The shell is surprisingly thick - given how delicate the meat is - and it's the delicacy of texture and flavour which makes them so prized. But it also makes it a nightmare to process. We cook them by removing the legs from the bodies - cooking them separately in a court bouillon - then chilling them directly on ice. I break down the legs in segments - and the bodies I crack open like a clamshell with a sharpening steel as a lever. And here's the fun part - which would actually be fun if it were around a newspaper-covered kitchen table with family and friends and cold beers - I take a wooden mallet and try to crack the shell without crushing the piece completely. It's like cracking walnuts - you want to crack the shell but not pulverize the meat. And then we painstakingly extract the meat - and then later even more painstakingly remove any bits of shell or cartilage - the latter which can especially be a bitch to detect. We serve it two ways - hot and cold. The cold is done as a kind of sushi - with a wrapper of romaine lettuce leaf and a filling of the crab seasoned with crab mayo, fresh horseradish, and garnished with a few sprinkles of dried yuzu and a drop of the miraculous Manni olive oil. The hot with a small round of warm foie gras mousse surrounded by a brunoise of jewel-like vegetables. More tomorrow. I really need my 5 hours of sleep now.