{"id":5730,"date":"2015-10-23T01:26:36","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T01:26:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=5730"},"modified":"2015-10-23T01:26:36","modified_gmt":"2015-10-23T01:26:36","slug":"oysters-pea-crab-swordfish-tomato-radish-greens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=5730","title":{"rendered":"oysters, pea crab; swordfish, tomato, radish greens"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"13_wild_oysters\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Because I already had enough vegetables on hand already, almost my only\u00a0purpose in heading for the Union Square Greenmarket that day was to secure a seafood entr\u00e9e for dinner. \u00a0It had only occurred to me\u00a0to also pick up oysters because, while still abed, I had seen the Blue Moon Fish Company retweet of\u00a0a tweet\u00a0about their wild oysters<\/a>. It\u00a0included\u00a0a link to an article in the Village Voice featuring\u00a0both wild oysters and Blue Moon family anchor, Stephanie Villani, and I thought, what the heck…<\/p>\n

Only later did we add an embellishment, in the form of a\u00a0‘theme’: \u00a0Barry had suggested that I bring home\u00a0two dozen, which would make\u00a0it something of\u00a0special event, so we looked around for an\u00a0occasion, or excuse, for\u00a0a\u00a0mid-week oyster feast, perhaps a birthday or anniversary, something at least a little splendid. He suggested we consider it\u00a0in honor of the Guggenheim Museum<\/a> first opening its doors on that day and month in 1959, ten years after the death of its patron, Solomon R. Guggenheim, and six months after the death of its architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, and I thought, why not?<\/p>\n

It turned out\u00a0that we had a tiny bonus inside the\u00a0bag I brought home. \u00a0It was the first time in 50 years of consuming oysters (and often opening\u00a0them myself),\u00a0that I came across what turned out to be an additional,\u00a0distantly-related shellfish species crouched up inside one of the\u00a0bivalves. \u00a0It was only when I looked very closely at what I\u00a0had removed from it\u00a0while it lay on my large oval plate (you can actually see it inside the top center oyster in the picture), that I noticed it was moving; it looked like a very tiny, perfectly formed, translucent crab (see the image at the bottom)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Thanks to\u00a0the internet gods\u00a0I learned\u00a0almost immediately that what I had in front of me\u00a0was an ‘oyster crab’, also called a “pea crab’. \u00a0At almost the same moment I also learned that it was common (or uncommon<\/em>) enough to be considered a delicacy by those who know and observe such things, for instance in Delmarva<\/a>,\u00a0and on the far end of Long Island<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So I slurped it down, but not without a tentative chew. \u00a0I figured that if I had the nerve to eat raw oysters, how was a tiny crab going to be a problem?<\/p>\n