Mixed doubles (well sort of...)

Team A: Me & Ma
Team B: Mr Crab & Mrs Crab

After a fairly long break from my culinary escapades, I ventured back into the kitchen for a cookery lesson from my mum, who I managed to prise away from the US Open tennis on TV.

The task at hand was to make a nice dish, using my mum’s own recipe, out of 2 medium sized crabs, one male and the other female. You maybe wondering why I am being so specific in terms of mentioning the gender of the crabs but that’s because there’s a slight difference in the way one prepares the female crab in comparison to the male crab, plus, the male crab tends to taste better (and for those of you with wandering minds…put a lid on those thoughts, please).

To begin with the preparation, Ma instructed me to finely chop 3 onions, 7-8 cloves of garlic, 2 inches of ginger, 2 tomatoes, and 3-4 sprigs of spring onion. Not satisfied with my haphazard chopping technique, Ma shared with me the technique she was taught during the days of her Cordon Bleu cookery lessons – Cordon Bleu often gets a mention in our home as you may have gathered from one of my previous posts! To be fair, the technique my mum taught me is one that does make the whole chopping process neater though and having Googled it, it appears to be a popular technique in the world of cooking.

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How to chop an onion (stylishly)

1)Leave the root intact, then peel away the skin from the top end. By leaving the root attached, it will help keep the onion together while slicing.

2)Slice the onion in half and place each half on a flat surface with the round side up.

3)Make multiple cuts vertically from the root end (i.e. from top to bottom) but do not cut all the way to the root at the end (i.e. make cuts ¾ of the way along the length of the onion, along the veins). Again, by leaving the root intact, it will help keep the onion together while slicing

4) Depending on the fineness you want , make horizontal cuts across the vertical cuts whilst you hold on to the root end firmly. The last cut will be the little root bit, and this can be discarded.
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Sharon's mountain of chopped vegetables





Next, came the fun, stress relief bit (or what I like to call the “bash the crab” bit): the crab was already cleaned and cut by our fishmonger, but one of my mum’s top tips is to make cracks in the tough crab shell beforehand with whatever tool one chooses (we chose a small hammer) in order to enable the diner to extract the flesh without having to fiddle aboutwith crackers too much at the dining table. (And going back to the point I made earlier about the difference between the handling of the female crab versus the male crab, as female crab meat can be more gloopy / moist in texture if she is carrying eggs, one may wish to put aside to add nearer the end (or discard altogether) some of the more softer parts of the meat; the alternative would be to avoid buying a female crab, of course – and apologies to those of you on the squeamish side, this is the end of the gory part).

Bashed up crab meat





The crab beating marked the end of the preparatory (and most time consuming) part of the whole cooking process, and it was now time to start cooking the ingredients on the hob. Another one of my mum’s top tips is to steam the crab before frying so that it requires less frying time and therefore remains more succulent.

Crab being steamed

Steaming over, it was then time to fry some spices (2 bayleaves, 2 cloves, about 10-12 peppercorns and 2 cardamoms) as well as all the chopped vegetables except for the spring onions, before adding the crab to thewok containing some hot oil. After seasoning it with salt and sugar, to give the dish a further burst of flavour, I added some cayenne pepper, green chillies and the previously chopped spring onions. Cooking over, the crab was now ready to serve.

(I admit that the finished dish doesn't look particularly appetising in this picture but it honestly tasted nice!)

Given that it was a labour intensive meal (getting to that crab meat ain’t easy but certainly worth the effort!), it was only right that we fortified ourselves and washed the crab down with some chilled white wine!