The Horror...The Horror..

One of the three in this photo is not having a fun time (hint: it's the one without an Oscar)

There has been a considerable amount of research done about whether crustaceans feel pain or not. Is this actually under debate? When you stick a crab in a steam pot, I’m pretty sure the ensuing clanking is triggered by unmitigated agony and not because they’re dancing a jig. It’s one of the reasons I don’t like cooking crabs and lobsters; it’s never the yuk fest promised by Annie Hall. I want the death of the animals I eat to be as swift and painless as possible and I have yet to find a way to provide that for crustaceans. Chefs suggest freezing them, putting them in fresh water (a slow death that takes over 12 hours) or putting a knife through their heads. The latter method seemed to make the most sense and a few months ago, I tried it.

This sure as hell don't look humane.

I was making grilled lobster with herb butter so we split the lobsters from head to tail. The results were not convincing, probably because the brain halves were still connected to the body halves so the lobsters continued to twitch and squirm as I slathered their insides with butter. At least the dinner guests enjoyed the meal. Then I read about Simon Buckhaven, the Temple Grandin of shellfish. A few years ago, the English lawyer invented the horribly named, Crustastun, a metal bin that sends 110 volts through whatever you put into it – Dungeness crab, crayfish, spiny lobster, a large guinea pig – bringing about death within a couple seconds. Sounds great except the base model is the size of a Xerox machine and costs over $4,000.

It also plays a lilting lullaby right before they're zapped

Enter eBay, where you can get a pocket-sized rechargeable stun gun that delivers 2.7 million volts for under $20. So I did. This doesn’t mean that the stun gun has thousands of times the killing power of the Crustastun; stun guns only deliver milliamps where the Crustastun chamber hits its targets with 600 times the current (4-6 amps). My hope was that the delicate crustacean nervous system wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. I decided to name her "Mercy"

The day the post office delivered my instrument of death, I hightailed it over to the crazy Chinese market where they had stone crabs for a few bucks a pound. I took a couple of them home and then thought, “Oh shit. What do I do with them until killing time?” It’s not like I have a saltwater holding tank next to the sink. So I tossed them in the fridge and walked away, rationalizing to myself that they were napping peacefully. Yay, death with dignity!

I highly recommend using rubber gloves.

When it came to cooking time, I made sure the steam pot was hot and ready to go should the crabs survive their tasing. I took them out of the fridge and zapped each of them for a few seconds. The animals barely reacted despite the arcing current and tiny wisps of acrid smoke. After that, they seemed thoroughly and completely dead. Rather than do an autopsy, I tossed them in the pot where they cooked away soundlessly. Mission accomplished.

Now that’s what I call a dead crab

I made my friend shell the carcasses while I rolled out pasta and I made a green curry-like sauce substituting cream for coconut milk and tossed it all together with some corn and cilantro. My plating sucks

While stone crabs don’t yield as much meat as a Dungeness crab and they’re more of a pain to shell, they were nonetheless delicious and I didn’t have to shell squat (thanks, Steve). Boiled down with shrimp shells to a paste for a future bisque

Obviously, there is nothing scientific about my method and maybe it didn't even work. Maybe the tasing put the crabs into a state of paralyzing agony. But it seemed more humane than any method I've tried in the past. And since lobsters die from electrocution even more quickly than crab, I can't see why it wouldn't work on them, too.

My only regret is that I didn’t tase the giant shrimp I also cooked. They didn’t die as instantaneously in a hot pan as I thought they would. But if it’s any consolation, they might have been the best peel and eat shrimp I’ve ever eaten – tossed in a hot wok with ground pasilla and chipotle powder, cumin, sliced red jalapeno and garlic and salt. Sweet, spicy, sucked the heads...amazing. Sorry, shrimpses.

Summer Solstice is Carnage!

Last night my friends, Drew and Jenna, hosted grilled lobster night with me cooking. Truth be told, while I like lobster, I’m much more of a crab kind of guy. Better flavor, more versatile to cook with, blah, blah, blah. But it was the first hot day of the summer so grilled lobster seemed to be the appropriate plat du jour. I vaguely remembered seeing some cooking show where the guy split these live lobsters down the middle, slathered the insides with some sort of concoction and grilled them so I thought I’d do the same thing. It seemed to be a more humane way to kill them than dumping them in a pot. As I mentioned last week, it kinda sucks to deal with the crustacean death throes when you’re trying to entertain. I know some people will just have the fish monger steam their lobsters so they won’t have to deal with it, but the critters are still clanking around whether their in an industrial steamer or on your stovetop. Though I’ve never slaughtered a cow, my feeling is that anything you eat you should be prepared to kill. So I was mentally steeled to deal out some lobster death. Luckily, Drew, who had split lobsters before, offered to slaughter while I slathered. Thanks, Drew.

Lobster Slather 2 sticks of butter, softened 3 cloves of garlic, pressed or minced ½ onion, minced (or a big shallot) Juice of a lemon Chopped Italian parsley Chopped fresh thyme Salt and pepper Mash everything together.

It turns out that lobsters are hardy and obstinate creatures. Even split down the middle with their claws removed, lobsters continue to squirm. Their antennae twitch and their mouths flutter, as if gasping for air. It made slathering them with butter feel particularly savage. Post fact, I learned that some believe that lobsters are aware even when they are missing their appendages and cut in half. Oops. Between the initial carnage and me discovering that fact, I grilled the then unmoving lobsters and they were delicious, but I couldn't help but feel pangs of guilt in my lobster-filled gut. Later, I also learned that most lobsters go through this insane journey from Nova Scotia to Louisville (UPS’ hub city), where they are housed in a sort of lobster motel until they are overnighted to some restaurant or fish market where they flop around in a murky tank awaiting their torturous demise. I felt like the Hannibal Lecter of the ocean floor. I researched into other killing methods that were supposed to be "humane," but there was no definitive, painless way to murder a lobster. I even looked into the CrustaStun, a $4,000 gizmo that kills lobsters with 110 volts in five seconds. But then I thought, how big is the difference between five seconds of electrocution and 20 seconds of boiling water? It’s not like the lobster’s going to suffer from post traumatic stress disorder; either way it’s dead. And there’s even some debate whether lobsters even have a brain with which to feel pain. Sure they respond to physical stimuli, but, heck, so do plants. And wait a second - if I cut them in half, which half feels pain? I started to feel a little less homicidal (lobstercidal?). I mean, what's the big deal? While writing this, I’ve swatted three flies without remorse and isn’t a crustacean kind of like an overgrown underwater insect? Wait. By that logic, flies should be on my list of gastronomical treasures. Hm. On that note, it’s unlikely I’ll be eating lobster again any time soon.