Celebrate winter with fresh crab
Executive Chef Jeff Reilly of The Duck Club comes up with a different dish each winter to showcase the sweet, fresh Dungeness crab pulled from the chilly ocean waters just a stone’s throw from his Bodega Bay restaurant.
This year, he will be serving steaming bowls of crab cioppino, a rib-sticking stew studded with fresh cod, clams, mussels, crab meat and whole crab claws. Reilly sources the crab for this classic dish, perfect for a feast on New Year’s Eve, from the neighboring Tides Wharf.
“I’m a three-minute drive from there,” Reilly said. “The Tides Wharf has three boats, and they also save the crab shells for us, after they clean and pick it, and I make the stock base for the cioppino.”
The rustic fisherman’s dish is believed to have been developed in the late 1800s by North Beach fishermen from Italy’s Liguria region who immigrated to San Francisco. It rose to fame at some of the city’s earliest restaurants on Fisherman’s Wharf in the 1930s.
“Last year we did crab gumbo, but this year I’ve decided to do cioppino,” said the chef. “It’s a classic San Francisco dish, and we decided to use some awesome local flavors.”
The classic cioppino is a hearty dish made with red bell peppers, tomatoes, white wine and herbs, plus that day’s catch. For his Wine Country iteration, Reilly adds saffron and fennel to the mix, plus garlic and bell pepper, thyme and oregano, white wine and chili flakes, tomato paste and diced tomatoes.
“Fennel grows crazy all around here, and it adds a nice flavor,” he said. “It’s aromatic and works really well with crab.”
For chefs and home cooks, cooking the North Coast’s favorite crustacean offers a simple challenge. You need to be careful to let its delicate flavor shine through without being overpowered.
Despite growing up in the historic fishing village of Marblehead, Mass., Reilly now prefers Dungeness crab meat to the lobster he used to catch in his Boston whaler, then sell on the dock to pay for gas.
“I was back there this fall and ate a bunch of lobster rolls,” he said. “Lobster is just so rich. I like the crab flavor because it’s a little more delicate … I like the sweetness.”
To make the cioppino, Reilly prepares the crab stock and the cioppino base in advance. Then he cooks the crab in simmering water for about 16 minutes, adding a bit of spice with Zatarain’s crab-boil spice blend from New Orleans.
The rest of the dish is prepared fresh to order and served with a traditional slice of garlic bread.
“We sear the fish with the mussels and clams, and then we add our cioppino base to it and steam until the mussels open up, then we throw in the pre-cooked crab at the end to warm it up,” he said. “That gives a really fresh feel to it.”
As a savory crab starter, The Duck Club offers Crab Cakes with Tomato Ginger Chutney, a dish so popular it’s impossible to take it off the menu.
“I’ve done them the same way for 20 years,” said Reilly, who worked at The Duck Club from 1994 to 2006, then returned in 2010. “That’s one dish that people have learned to love.”
The secret to great crab cakes is to use very little filler and let the fresh crab speak for itself.
“For five pounds of crab, we use a cup of mayonnaise and a cup of panko,” Reilly said. Other ingredients include celery, red bell pepper, red onion, cumin and Tabasco sauce, plus lemon and lime with their zest and juice.
Reilly came up with the Tomato Ginger Chutney sauce while working with well-known Napa Valley chef Cindy Pawlcyn at a few of her “Real Restaurant” eateries in San Francisco.
“Somebody once said, ‘These crab cakes are so good, it’s too bad you can’t put ketchup on them,’” he recalled. “So I decided to make the tomato chutney.”
For the chutney, Reilly takes canned tomatoes and adds sugar, vinegar and spices, then cooks it all down to a paste.
“The canned tomatoes are going to give you a much better texture,” he said. “They hold up, and it’s consistent.”
Over the years, Reilly has developed close relationships with West County cheesemakers, ranchers and farmers as well as fishermen. The Duck Club Restaurant menu reflects his focus on local ingredients, simply prepared, in dishes such as the Pan Seared Liberty Duck Breast or Bellwether Farms Whole Milk Ricotta Gnocchi.
“We don’t reinvent a lot of things,” he said. “People can read our menu and understand what they’re getting. As long as our ingredients are fresh and execution is spot-on, that’s what makes it worthwhile coming here.”
During the winter, guests may want to come early to take a walk on the beach, or sip a cocktail around the outdoor fire pit while enjoying the sunset.
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