Crabby

One of the best things about West Coast winters is Dungeness crabs, and we are right in the thick of the season. If you think you love crab but have never cooked a live one, then you need to get your ass down to Sunh Fish (1301 Broadway), which currently has locally caught crabs for $3.99 a pound. After the cruel deed is done, and the crab’s goose is cooked, you have a few ways you can go. You can squeeze some also-in-season Meyer lemon on the tasty flesh. You can go with the old standby and dip it in butter. You could make an Asian-inspired dipping sauce of soy sauce, sesame oil and chopped ginger. Or you could season it as the good Lord intended: with its own rich, salty guts, er, tomalley (if you want to phrase it delicately). If you’re as hardcore as Alice Waters, you may just make your own mayonnaise and whip some tomalley into it, as she recommends in her book The Art of Simple Food.