Bill Bumgarner

It is now artichoke season in the bay area. As a result, there are tons of fresh artichokes in all the store for less than $1/each.

We had no idea what we were doing for dinner when we ran into our neighbor while pulling into our driveway. He decided [earlier, apparently] that he should bring over some ribs and chokes for all of us to cook up for a mighty random feast. I really like our neighbor.

To go with the artichokes, I made a Dungeness Crab Butter with Lemon. Never made it before, didn't have a recipe, it just sounded like a good idea as it rolled through my head (kinda like some of the recipes on the Bugs Bunny & Road Runner show do).

It was spectacular.

To make, grab some cooked dungeness crab and throw it in a pot with a couple of sticks of butter. In my case, I used a frozen chunk of crab that was left over from our Crabtacular II party (we cooked 65 lbs of crab in a multitude of ways). It was a chunk of cleaned crab meat about the size of a stick of butter. Add the juice of one (preferably meyers) lemon. Add a touch of hungarian paprika, if you have it. Stir until the butter is thoroughly melted and everything is nice and warm. Then pureŽ in a blender or food processor. Pour it back into the pot and warm it up a bit more. Then pour into little bowls and serve with the artichokes as a dipping sauce.

Yummy, yummy stuff. When eating the artichoke hearts, I recommend cutting them into bite sized pieces and dredging them on the bottom of the crab butter bowl as that is where all the little bits of crab can be found.