BLUE CRAB DINNER AT LTO

Starting Friday, I'll be at LTO doing a blue crab dinner. It's gonna be dope. I did the dinner just like we would at home, but with some new additions. Spring/Summer we always bring icebox duck wings with us fishing, crabbing, or barbecues. They are braised duck wings that get chilled in the fridge overnight cause they taste better cold. The skin gets a real interesting texture.

Fried Oyster Po Baos w/ red sausage pate is something we've been doing at Baohaus the last few weeks. It sounds crazy, but it's the bao as usual with a fried oyster getting the same prep as our chicken but it's topped with pickled radish/carrots as opposed to the haus relish. More sweetness and acidity that way.

Hunan ham hock w/ stir fried leeks is a classic dish, but nothing goes better with blue crab than corn so we take fresh corn kernels and throw them in the mix. Smoky, a little spicy, and sweet.

This sounds like a fusion dish, but it's not. Cajun and Taiwanese people both make sausages out of rice. For Cajuns it's boudin, for Taiwanese people it's a sticky rice in casing. We're going to do the sticky rice sausage with some pork butt, liver, sticky rice, and serve it with homemade sweet chili sauce.

Other highlights for me are the Gator Tail, which is something we grew up eating in Florida and the FOB chicken. It's a half roasted chicken seasoned with sichuan peppercorns, anise, ginger, salt and pepper, then served with skin crisped from hot infused oil.