It felt like ages since Leigh, Rach and Greta had been round for dinner so I was pleased when they were able to join us for a meal last night. I’d overhead Rach and Cath discussing chilli crab at Yum Cha last week and was reminded that it was on my list of cooking challenges. So off to the Vic Market I went for a chat with the fish mongers about what sort of crab I should buy. I’m really interested in buying in-season produce and sustainably fished seafood, and recently learnt that seafood has “seasons” too. I was informed that blue swimmer crab was currently out of season and that I should buy some Australian sand crab.
Whenever I’m cooking with a new ingredient I refer to Stephanie Alexander’s “Cook’s Companion” regarding preparation of the raw ingredient. Stephanie Alexander writes that sand crabs are plentiful in South Australia’s Spencer and St Vincent’s gulfs. The crabs I bought were already dead so I needed to work out what I needed to do to prepare it for the wok.
Stephanie advised “with a sharp, heavy cleaver, chop it into pieces. Remove the head sac and feathery gills”. “Discard the bony section at the head” and “rinse away the yellow or brown ‘mustard’ “. It was a little like biology class as Rach and I inspected the crabs to find those “feathery” gills and work out what we needed to discard. Rach and I found it quite fun despite the somewhat disgusting nature of the task.
My choice to be a vegetarian has always been an ethical one rather than about taste or preference. I quite like the taste of meat but choose not to eat it. Having made the decision to include seafood as part of my diet I feel the need to make informed decisions about the types of seafood I am eating (for example is it sustainably fished?) and treat the seafood with respect. I buy whole fish, live mussels and whole calamari/squid to stay in touch with the once live thing that I am eating - rather than heavily processed products that bear little resemblance to the original animal. That’s why I feel it is important for me to do things such as learning how to chop up and prepare a whole crab. The next step would be to learn how to and kill a live crab — even writing the sentence now makes me feel uncomfortable.
I’ve been craving fish a lot lately. I think it is because I have cut down on my consumption of canned tuna. The sustainably fished cans of tuna are frightfully expensive so I’ve only been buying them occasionally. The sustainable fisheries guide advises that canned salmon is a better option than tuna, but of the rows and rows of tinned salmon, it’s only the John West red and pink salmon (canned in Alaska) that has the tick of approval from the Marine Stewardship Council. This is disappointing.
The recipe and method for making chilli crab is included in a previous post. Eating chilli crab is a very visceral experience as there’s no elegant way to eat crab, no way to avoid your hands becoming covered in the sticky chilli sauce as you poke out the meat any-way you can. Greta was incredibly lucky that her parents provided the crab meat for her, without her having to do any of the hard work! I was also very impressed as she called out for “more crab”. The feeling of cracking the shells in your hands and pulling away the broken shell to reveal the meat reminded me of a Roman banquet, and it was a lovely meal to share with family. *S
