Someone once told me the fat in a Louisiana seafood was called "royal", but I cannot find it in the dictionary. Is this true? Maybe it was not shrimp or blue crab, but lobster fat.
I used the word today to describe some very full boiled crabs at Canseco's Gro in Metairie. They really hit the spot. I was surprised because although the moon is waxing, it is not full. I thought crabs got fat like that in the full moon.
I love living in a city where you run over to a corner grocery at lunch for boiled seafood. What a nice surprise. I have been away too long.
Never heard the term "royal", and I know lots of crab people, from fishermen to wholesalers to processors to pickers. Have heard the terms mustard, butter, and fat used in south LA. Fat is by far the most common in LA; it's technically a digestive organ called the hepatopancreas. If you're contaminant-obsessed, skip it. It concentrates all sorts of organic contaminants found in the water. As for crabs being fat during various phases of the moon, it isn't consistently true. On any given day of the month, you'll catch some fat, some skinny, some inbetween. The skinniest crabs are always those who have just shed/molted, and the fattest are those just about to shed their shells. One good test (on live crabs) is to look at the underside: on a very full crab, the white parts of the shell will have a creamy to yellow appearance. Skinny crabs will look bluish-white.---HC, www.bouillie.wordpress.com