OPB’s “Superabundant” explores the stories behind the foods of the Pacific Northwest with videos, articles and this weekly newsletter. Every week, Heather Arndt Anderson, a Portland-based culinary historian, food writer and ecologist, highlights different aspects of the region’s food ecosystem. This week she offers a recipe for deviled Dungeness crab and sweet corn casserole.

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If you follow any of the “Top Recipes of 2024”-type year-end roundups circulating the internet, you’ve probably noticed that one-pot meals have maintained their rightful spot high on these lists. Casseroles, sheet pans and skillets still manage to draw us in with their promises of simplicity, comfort, and ease of cleanup, not to mention the negligence they afford. But just because these types of dishes are homey and comfy doesn’t mean they can’t still be elegant enough for special occasions — adding a single fancy ingredient (in this case, fresh Dungeness crab) can transform a workaday dish into something festive. Though the tradition of eating seafood on Christmas Eve comes from Italian Catholics, the holiday of feasts and merriment in mid-December goes back millennia, to ancient Rome — do you know the name of this festival? Read on to find out!

Dungeness crab season

Just in time for the holidays, the Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife has announced a Dec. 16 start date for the 2024 commercial Dungeness season — but only from Cape Falcon (near Nehalem) to the California border. Due to low meat count and high domoic acid in crabs tested in Long Beach, Washington, harvest for the rest of the north coast will stay closed until crab populations meet recovery targets. Recreational crabbing is open along the entire Oregon Coast.

Watch the Dungeness crab episode of “Superabundant”

Where to find tamales for Christmas

Though tamales have been part of Latin American spiritual practices for millennia (originating with Olmecs and Toltecs in around 8,000 BCE), they wouldn’t become a traditional Christmas food until after European colonizers besieged Mesoamerican temples and acculturated the people with Catholicism in the 15th century. Today, tamales de Navidad are part of holiday meals in many Latinx households, but if you don’t make your own, you’re still in luck — OregonLive recently shared its recommendations for where to find tamales on the Tualatin Valley Highway from Beaverton to Cornelius, and Eater Portland’s list covers the rest of the Metro area, from Vancouver south to Milwaukie and east to Gresham.

Meet Sunflare

Like the pine trees lining the winding road, Washington’s newest apple’s got a name. After receiving 15,280 suggestions during the public naming period, Washington State University settled on “Sunflare” for its latest development, a cross between the Australian variety Cripps Pink and Honeycrisp. Sunflare is slated to hit markets in 2029.

“Joy” still the primer on home cooking

Nine editions and nearly a century after its inception, “Joy of Cooking” finds itself in the second place spot on “The New York Times Style Magazine” recent list of the 25 most influential cookbooks of the past 100 years. Like previous editions, the latest edition, published in 2019, was ushered into existence by the descendants of the original author, Irma Rombauer. Coincidentally, Rombauer’s great-grandson John Becker (who co-wrote the 2019 edition with Megan Scott, both of Portland) grew up with “Superabundant” producer MacGregor Campbell. (In full disclosure, I was a paid recipe tester on the latest edition.)

Good things abound

Your midnight snacking may vary, but I just have to give a tip o’ the hat to ripe red anjou pears, which were originally discovered (and then bred) in Southern Oregon in the 1950s. Pretty much all pears (Oregon’s official state fruit!) are in season now but the ones I found locally are as petite as seckels or forelles, with a lovely garnet colored skin and buttery, juicy flesh. I love them with blue cheese and smoked almonds (sweet and salty for the win), but they’re also ideal for poaching in spiced wine or with roast pork and caramelized onions.

For gardeners, winter can be a time for rest, but if you can’t resist the draw of growing something edible indoors, sprouts (and partially sprouted seeds) are probably one of the easiest. They’re also one of the most common foods to transmit food-borne illnesses, unfortunately, but an Oregon State University study published in 2021 (likely coinciding with the pandemic and a renewed national interest in growing one’s own crops) suggests this may be abated by soaking seeds in cold, salted water. People who are most at risk (pregnant people, the elderly and folks with a compromised immune system) should probably avoid raw sprouts altogether.

Lately, in the “Superabundant” kitchen

✨ Keeping with the previous week “ragu” theme, I threw together a rich and spicy mapo tofu. I always appreciate dishes that pair tofu with meat, especially when they’re just as good with gnocchi as they are with steamed rice. Gnocchi may sound like my #ethnochaos talking, but those tender little dough babies are truly perfect with the numb-spicy pork ragu. The saucy ragu is also wonderful as a sandwich (“mapo joes”).

✨ Again, my utter disregard for culinary mores was in the driver’s seat when I made a pan of very garlicky, buttery shrimp scampi and then tossed in a splash of rice wine, minced ginger, snow peas and lo mein noodles. Olive Garden could never! (But Panda Express might.)

✨ As mentioned in previous newsletters, I am often stricken with powerful nostalgia for the foods of my impoverished childhood, but this time instead of cracking into boxed potatoes au gratin, I decided to make it from scratch. It sounds effortful, but was really a perfect confluence of necessity: I had some Yukon golds about to sprout, a half pint of heavy cream that needed to be used, some Gouda that got a little too dried out in my sloppy wax paper wrap job and an errant cup of chicken stock that didn’t fit in the pressure canner. (OK, I did also add a little ranch and cheese powders because I still kind of wanted it to taste like the boxed stuff.) 10/10, will definitely make it again.

Recipe: Deviled Dungeness crab and sweet corn casserole

No matter how well I may cook or how much access I have to fresh ingredients, some processed, ready-to-eat and boxed-mix foods will just always hold a place in my heart. There are the aforementioned boxed potatoes au gratin, instant noodles and the crème de la crème, Jiffy mix. I grew up on the tiny boxes of biscuits, blueberry muffins and of course, the corn muffins that are just as good baked as a solid mass in a casserole pan as they are little paper cups — especially if you throw in gobs of sour cream and a can of creamed corn. This corn casserole is a classic, sometimes passed down generations as though it was a cherished family recipe.

Ask pretty much anyone from the South and they’ll nearly universally agree that despite the simplicity of its assembly and humble (some might say charmingly lowbrow) roots, the Jiffy corn casserole is a fixture at holiday meals. It’s like some magical lovechild between cornbread and corn pudding — more like spoonbread than a casserole — and it’s made positively decadent by adding another beloved holiday ingredient: Dungeness crab (the season for which happens to have just begun).

Crab isn’t just another seafood to add to the Feast of the Seven Fishes; shellfish were enjoyed by ancient Romans during banquets and festivities including Saturnalia, which was celebrated at the same time (and in similar ways) as Christmas is today. Celebrating the return of abundant Saturn with feasts and exchanging gifts, Saturnalia (and Yule, in Northern Europe) was eventually adopted by the Christian church to attract converts.

Though it may sound anathema to add such a luxury ingredient to a dish that otherwise costs around $2 to make, it turns out I’m not completely out of left field with another harebrained recipe idea — I’ve always loved pairing Dungeness crab with corn, but even more, I love when my hunches are substantiated.

Seeing one included in the seafood chapter of Sunset Magazine’s 1958 “Cooking with Casseroles” cookbook confirmed that even if it was pure kitsch, I was onto something. Then when I saw Melissa Clark’s recipe for puffy spoonbread with corn, crab and roasted red peppers I felt like maybe I’m not just pulling recipe ideas out of my sitzfleisch. Call me Mama Casserole, ‘cause I 🎶maaaake my own kind of hotdiiiiish. 🎶

The canon “Jiffy corn casserole” recipe, upon which this is based, originally appeared in grocery stores in 1960. Here it’s been tweaked ever so slightly, opting to use butter rather than margarine and adding a bit of cayenne and roasted red peppers to “devil” the crab (deviled crab is usually a standalone breaded dish but the historic use of “deviled” refers to the addition of chiles in some form). Adding crab is obviously gilding the lily; the boxed mix and can of creamed corn, however, are non-negotiables. Serves 4-6

Ingredients

8 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

1 cup sour cream

2 eggs

1 8-ounce can cream-style corn

1 8-ounce can corn kernels, drained

¾ cup diced roasted red peppers (jarred is fine), divided

1 box Jiffy corn muffin mix

8 ounces crab meat (yield from a 2-pound Dungeness; drain and pick for shells if using canned)

½ teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon paprika

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 375o and grease a 2-quart casserole dish.
2. In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter, sour cream and eggs until smooth, then stir in the creamed corn, corn kernels and ½ cup of the diced roasted red bell pepper until thoroughly combined. Stir in the corn muffin mix.
3. In a separate bowl, toss the crab meat with the cayenne and paprika, then fold it into the cornbread batter. Scrape the batter into the prepared casserole dish. Sprinkle the remaining ¼ cup of diced red peppers across the top, then bake until the casserole is golden brown on top and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 50-60 minutes. Let it stand for at least 10 minutes before serving (it’ll be a bit jiggly when you pull it out but will firm up a bit).

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