I don't know how he's gonna take this, but when I think about my uncle Chick, I think about crabs.
(That can't have come out right. Better explain.)
See, Chick lives in Long Island, NY, and his property backs up onto a canal. He's got a dock, where he keeps a small boat, and where you could hang around all day watching other people going by on theirs.
It's nice.
But to see the best thing about my uncle's setup you need to look very closely. Tied to the wood railing that leads to the dock is a weathered and not very thick piece of line, which drapes down along a retaining wall and into the canal.
At the end of the line is a crab pot. It's Chick's, and it gets a lot of action. Always has.
Chick called me the other day to see if I could make it down for his annual Fourth of July feast. Which of course got me thinking about, well, you know.
And so I did it my uncle's way. Just not with the blue crabs he uses, because I can't get those up here in Maine, I can only get the local rock crabs.
I couldn't bear to cut into a live crab and so I steamed them a couple minutes and then cleaned the insides.
And into the red sauce they went.
Simmered for a couple hours at low heat.
And thrown together with tagliatelle.
Hope to see you this weekend, Chick. But if not I promise -- for real this time, I mean it, probably in July sometime -- to make it down for a boat ride this summer.And for some of your crabs.
(Hey, Vito, show this to your old man, would you. Last I looked there wasn't a computer at his place, so drag him over to your house and fire up yours!)
