By Late February. The homemade miso is a year old now — a full cycle, seed to ferment, spring to spring. I opened the crock and the miso was dark and rich and perfect, the long fermentation producing a depth of flavor that no store-bought miso can match. I made miso soup with it and the soup was — I need a new word. "Good" is insufficient. "Perfect" is overused. The soup was "right" in the way that Fumiko's ozoni was right: not technically perfect, not objectively the best, but exactly what it should be, the soup fulfilling its own definition, the soup being itself, completely, without apology.
I started a new batch of miso — the second year, the second fermentation, the practice becoming annual, the way the shiso planting is annual and the kuromame is annual and the ozoni is annual. The annual practices are the bones of my year, the structural support that holds the twelve months together. Without the practices, the year is formless. With them, the year has shape: miso in spring, shiso in summer, kuromame in winter, ozoni on New Year's. The shape is the practice. The practice is the life.
Miya is writing stories at school — longer ones, with characters and plots and dialogue. Her teacher sent home a story called "The Soup Grandmother" about an old woman who lives in a kitchen and makes soup for everyone who comes to her door. The soup is magic — it cures sadness, fixes broken bones, makes lost dogs come home. The grandmother never runs out of soup because the soup refills itself, the pot always full, the ladle always reaching down and finding more. I read the story and cried, because the story is Fumiko, and the story is me, and the pot that refills itself is the practice, and Miya has understood the practice at seven years old, without being taught, without being told, the understanding arriving the way dashi arrives: through time, through heat, through the overnight soaking of a life lived in a kitchen where the soup is always being made.
When I read Miya’s story about the soup grandmother — the woman whose pot refills itself, whose kitchen is always open — I thought about all the dishes that work that way, the ones you set out and people just keep coming back to, spooning out more, the dish somehow never empty until it is. This crab dip is one of those. It’s warm and sharp and rich, the kind of thing Fumiko would have set on the counter without announcement, and it would just disappear and reappear, the way the best food does when the kitchen is the center of the house and the house is the center of the life.
Grandmother’s Hot Deviled Dungeness Crab Dip
Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 40 minutes | Servings: 8
Ingredients
- 1 pound fresh Dungeness crabmeat, picked over for shells
- 8 ounces cream cheese, softened
- 1/3 cup mayonnaise
- 1/4 cup sour cream
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
- 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1/2 teaspoon hot sauce, or more to taste
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
- 2 green onions, thinly sliced
- 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese, divided
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- Crackers or sliced baguette, for serving
Instructions
- Preheat the oven. Set your oven to 375°F. Lightly grease a small baking dish or oven-safe skillet.
- Make the base. In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese, mayonnaise, and sour cream until smooth. Stir in the lemon juice, Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, cayenne, smoked paprika, and garlic powder until well combined.
- Fold in the crab. Gently fold in the Dungeness crabmeat, green onions, and 1/4 cup of the Parmesan cheese. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Be gentle — you want to keep the crab in nice pieces.
- Transfer and top. Spread the mixture into the prepared baking dish. Sprinkle the remaining 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese evenly over the top.
- Bake. Bake for 22 to 25 minutes, until the dip is bubbling around the edges and the top is golden brown.
- Serve warm. Let cool for 5 minutes, then serve with crackers or sliced baguette. The dip is best eaten warm from the oven.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 215 | Protein: 15g | Fat: 16g | Carbs: 2g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 480mg