Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Stewed Soft-Shell Crabs with Okras
Stewed Soft-Shell Crabs with Okras
Brown in a saucepan with one-half ounce or so of butter a chopped onion, an ounce or more of raw ham cut into dice, half of a green pepper pod, also cut into dice, one-half tablespoonful of salt and one teaspoonful of pepper. Moisten with about one quart of white broth or consomme, add a tablespoonful of uncooked rice, six sliced okras, also a sliced tomato. Allow all these to cook thoroughly for about twenty minutes, and five minutes before serving add the meat of three well-washed, minced, soft-shell crabs.
A Creole-leaning crab stew from Oscar's Waldorf kitchen, closer to a loose gumbo than a soup. It comes together in half an hour, and the only real risk is overcooking the crab.
- Add the crab last, and mean itFive minutes is the outer limit; soft-shell crab meat is delicate and turns stringy and dry with longer cooking. Fold it in off the boil, at a bare simmer, and serve straight away.
- "Well-washed, minced" crabsSoft-shells are cleaned by removing the face, the apron, and the feathery gills, then rinsed; the whole body is edible. "Minced" here probably means chopping the cleaned crabs into rough pieces rather than picking out meat as you would from a hard-shell, though the phrase "the meat of three ... crabs" leaves the point open.
- White brothA light, unbrowned stock -- veal or chicken, unsalted or barely salted. Modern low-sodium chicken stock stands in directly. One quart with a tablespoon of rice gives a thin, brothy stew.
- Go easy on the seasoning as writtenHalf a tablespoon of salt plus a full teaspoon of ground pepper into a quart of already-seasoned stock, alongside diced ham, will read as harsh. Season lightly at the start and correct at the end.
- Green pepper podAn ordinary green bell pepper; half of one, diced. Nothing hot is intended, though a Creole cook of the period might have reached for something sharper.
- Okra and the ropiness questionSix sliced pods cooked twenty minutes in liquid will thicken the stew and give it some body -- that is the point here. If you want less viscosity, slice the okra and sear it dry in a hot pan first, then add it.
- Raw hamAn uncooked, dry-cured ham -- prosciutto, speck, or a slab of country ham. Not deli ham, which will disintegrate and add water rather than flavor.
- YieldTwo generous portions or four small first courses. It does not hold or reheat; the crab and okra both suffer.
Oscar Tschirky, maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria, published his cook book in 1896. This dish draws on the Creole idiom that turns up in American hotel cooking of the period -- the ham, onion, green pepper, tomato, okra and rice are the standard framework of a New Orleans okra gumbo, thinned here into a stew and finished with soft-shell crab. Soft-shells were a genuine luxury of the period: they are blue crabs taken in the brief window just after molting, shipped live and packed in seaweed from the Chesapeake and the New Jersey shore, and available only in the warmer months. That short season, plus the okra and tomato, points to a summer dish.