North Carolina’s Crab Cuisine by Ruth Paget
I felt part of North Carolina’s Outer Banks beach culture every time my family went to oceanfront restaurants about one mile from the North Carolina border in Virginia Beach (Virginia) for boiled crab and buttery, seared scallops and shrimp.
Some of these restaurants even had boat drive-up windows for take-out orders.
Laurent and Florence always ordered buckets of boiled crab while I would get seafood platters of buttery, seared scallops and shrimp. Laurent and I always drank a California chardonnay with our meal like reliably good Kendall-Jackson.
My mom job was to crack crab claws for Florence, so she could dunk them still warm in melted butter. She would say her crab were getting cold when I took breaks to eat my scallops and shrimp.
We chair danced to the tunes of Jimmy Buffet and Hootie and the Blowfish and ate key lime pie for dessert for me, ice cream for Florence, and coffee for trim sailor Laurent.
Seafood and crab, in particular, define the cuisine of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. You could buy freshly cooked lump crabmeat in supermarkets in Virginia Beach to use in omelets and appetizers as well as ready-made deli dishes using seafood at Harris-Teeter and Hanaford supermarkets.
I made many dishes at home to save money. It was easy to do, because I had access to relatively inexpensive ingredients and recipes in the Virginian-Pilot newspaper. Many of the recipes I used are similar to the ones in Outer Banks Cookbook: Recipes and Traditions from North Carolina’s Barrier Islands by Elizabeth Wiegand. Some of my favorite recipes in this cookbook include:
-spicy toasted pecans – Pecans grow in North Carolina’s sandy soil. They are a favorite with libations like Hurricane cocktails and margaritas.
-Figs with Gorgonzola cheese and walnuts – Figs also grow in North Carolina. You place a walnut in the center of a fig half in this recipe and top it with Gorgonzola cheese before running it under it under the broiler for a few minutes.
-figs with country ham and green salad
-artichoke and crab dip
-crabmeat pâté
-shrimp bisque
-crabmeat omelet
-seared scallops
-scallops and scallions on polenta medallions
-shrimp boiled in beer
-warm shrimp pasta salad with goat cheese
-chilled pickled shrimp
-creamy she crab soup – there are canned versions of this soup that are also very good like Chincoteague She Crab Soup
-French Market Flounder (Marseilles-style) – dredge flounder in seasoned flour and then egg. Brown the fish. Add white wine to the pan and top fish with a tomato slice and cheese and run the pan under the broiler for several minutes. Serve with white rice that you mix with pan juices. Super easy and delicious recipe.
Seafood lovers will find many reasons to love Outer Banks Cookbook: Recipes and Traditions from North Carolina’s Barrier Islands by Elizabeth Wiegand.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
