Instructions: I thought Id give a quick hint on picking crab meat. Generally its blue crab meat you need to pick, not dungeness or Alaskan (for the record.)

What we do here (here being the restaurant business in Washington, DC, suburb of Maryland (s)) is to spread it out on a cookie sheet. Put it in the oven at about 250F until you can see the shell and cartilage it in. It turns brighter white, where the crab meat is a bit grayer. Hard to describe, but once you do it youll see what I mean. Its really easy to get beautiful crab without breaking up the nicer sized pieces hunting for shell youd mess anyway!

The heat doesnt hurt the crab, because blue crab meat is sold steamed,

(in answer to someones question earlier).

Hope this helps you make impeccable crab dishes! (g) ["Christine F.

I live in Potomac, MD Love to know what restaurant???? And around here the blue crab we buy at our local supermarkets is in vacuum packed. Get it on ice at the seafood counter. Its already cooked and out of the shell of course. But you need to "pick over" it to remove any stray fragments of shell or cartilage. [Terry Pogue (tpogue@idsonline.com)]

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