Savor the Flavors!

Tempt all your dinner guests’ tastebuds with a palate of spices and flavors. Just like an artist and his array of colors, knowing how flavors react with your headlining cuisine will open up an opportunity to amaze with your menu. Think about your next blue crab feast. Even though this dinner favors simplicity and a playful mood for removing armored crustaceans’ shells, a ramekin of sauce can crack the difference between mundane and exuberance!

Locale certainly has an influence in the desired sauce when complementing the salty-sweet, robust and buttery blue crab meat. Marylanders may want to lose the ramekin for a bowl of Old Bay Spice or J.O. Spice #2, consisting of celery salt, red pepper, black pepper, paprika, bay leaves, cinnamon, mustard powder, nutmeg, clover, cardamom, and the like. These “peppery pop” concoctions smack the lips with a sense of urgency and a nostalgia to “summers of old.”

Creativity may get the most of the crab feast host and they’ll “bless the feast” with ramekins filled with nutty clarified butter or may even whip up a bold mixture of mayonnaise, balsamic and red wine vinegar.  The depth in flavors from a “puckering” of the balsamic and a sweet hint enhances the crab meat. At no time though, the sauce should upstage the blue crab’s robust flavor.

Traveling from the east coast to California, a South Asian approach includes poppy seeds to their “choice” liquid mix. A somewhat fruity and nutty undertone accompanies their crab ramekin dunk. These starry eyed Californians claim extra virgin olive oil, rice wine vinegar, chopped garlic, and then the poppy seed dresses up the crab meat with sophistication.

Deep south in Louisiana, the crab feaster changes the steaming pot to a boiling trough and attest crab boiling takes the crab to a more delicious level. Salt, pepper, lemon juice, lemon rinds and classic Old Bay soak into the jumbo, lump, and claw meat majestically. The lemon tang surprises the palate and gives it a fresh kick.

Either spicy and hot, smooth and tangy, “puckery” and sweet, each sauce creation represents an appreciative “afterthought” for a diner who will notice “feasting” tastes better when you savor the flavors.