Crabs!
Now, that I’ve got your attention, get your mind out of the gutter. I do not mean “crabs” as in that debilitating itching disease…
*Shudders*
No, no, no… I mean the animals known as crustaceans. You know, the ones that you find in the sea.
Anyway, the topic of crabs came to my attention about a week or so ago. I had been chatting online with a dear friend of mine who had been complaining about having eaten too much crabs over the weekend.
Now, keep in mind – this has been a common… ummm… topic of hers over the past few years. Whenever the word crab comes across my screen, I would feel a pang of hunger in my stomach. As she described the taste of the succulent animal, I began salivating, imagining that it was me, eating it in her stead. I imagined tasting the flaky texture of the crab, accompanied with the sweet, salty and spicy texture of the gravy, accompanied by a bowl of fluffy, steamed white rice. Imagining eating made me crave having crabs even so more.
What was a girl to do? I had to have it. I had to eat it. I did what I knew best when times of crisis – I looked it up on the internet!
I looked up every possible Boston restaurant webpage I could find for the mystical Chili Crab, the type of crab that I was craving. Alas, none of the restaurants in the area serve this dish – Or if they did, they’re definitely not advertising! The closest restaurant I found was in New York, and I wasn’t going to travel 4 hours for that one dish!! I’m not that crazy!
Fed up, I decided that if I wanted to have some crab, I am gonna have some darn crab. I continued to scour the web and finally stumbled upon a recipe for the Singaporean Chili Crab. At a glance, the recipe looked a little daunting. But after I decided to end this stupidly un-pregnant craving of mine, I psyched myself up and started planning to get the ingredients.
As I looked through the list, reality started settling in – I had to get crabs. Where would I find crabs in the dead of winter? The traditional supermarkets never sell crabs, let alone live crabs. (Yes – this recipe does call for live crabs… it was written between the lines.)
I thought and thought, and felt that I may have to go on yearning for this dish after all. And as suddenly as my despair had almost set, I realized that the Asian supermarket around the corner sold live fish… and perhaps…. perhaps they would also have live crabs! I made a mental note to get the crab the next time I visited the market. In the meantime, I researched on how to prepare live crabs. (For those of you out there who are curious, please do not look in YouTube..)
Two evenings after having searched for crabs on YouTube, I realized that I am still yearning for crabs. I decided then, that I had had enough yearning, and the yearning had to stop. I picked up the phone and informed Mr GC that I was going by the Asian market to get the crabs and specifically told him that I would need him to stop by to help get the crabs as, “I’m terrified of them.” (I had been permanently scarred by the video clips on YouTube). Mr GC agreed to meet me at the market in about 20 minutes.
So, that went well…
I headed to the Asian market and got the ingredients for the dish, purposely leaving the crab for last for Mr GC to help out with. However, Mr GC still hadn’t shown up as I put the final item into the cart. Since it was getting much later, I braved myself and headed up to the water tanks, where they stored the crabs and other sea creatures.
I looked in the tank, which actually looked like a mini swimming pool, and observed the crabs lazily sleeping in the cold seawater. I walked up toward the counter and waved at the fish guy (or however way you’d like to call him), and told him that I would like two crabs. He obviously did not understand what I had said and muttered something about a fish being out of stock. I then realized that we hadn’t been speaking the same language, so I had to succumb to sign language instead.
When the man finally caught my drift, he got out a big piece of a thick, plastic bag and a net, then motioned me to follow him to the tank. Of course, I followed stupidly. He then opened the bag and gave it to me. He motioned that I should leave the bag open while he gets the crab. I couldn’t have been more terrified at that moment. My brain completely froze, while the rusty gears in my head slowly clunked together trying to make sense of it all. It was working so slowly, it never triggered my flight response, which would have helped. The only thing I was able to do was to hold the bag out as far as I could, away from the crabs, away from my body, as if my life depended on it.
As I stood next to the tank, frozen to the ground, the man started scooping up crabs. As he chose a crab, I would nod my head quickly to signal that the crab was okay and he would drop it in the bag. In actuality, I was nodding my head so I could get over the bagging-the-crab experience as quickly as possible
When he finally got two crabs safely into the plastic bag, he took them and put it on the scale. He looked at me to see if I approved of the price. Even though a little pricier than expected, I nodded my head. I did so as I did not want to go back to the tank to reselect the crabs. I would have been out of my mind if I did, and would have to volunteer to get a brain transplant!
As I turned around to head to the cashier, guess who showed up? After all the trauma that I went through with picking out the crabs, Mr GC strolled into the store. Where was he when my brain was screaming crab? After finally checkout, Mr GC came up to apologize for his lateness. He added that he had called me earlier. I looked at my phone and noted two missed calls – both came in while I was holding the plastic bag, nodding to the fella at the tank, my brain frozen.
Talk about timing.
When we arrived home, I felt bad for the crabs being bound in the plastic bag. I decided that I was going to be humane and told Mr GC to let them out of the bag. Mr GC too, decided that he would be nice to the crabs and made a little salt water bath for them in our kitchen sink, while I went off to check on the recipe.
After a few minutes, Mr GC yelled to me from the kitchen about something. I rushed in only to see that the crabs had gotten agitated and were pushing themselves out of the water. They seemed capable in escaping. I was a little surprised to see all the action in the sink, because when they were fished out earlier, they seemed dazed, and not moving. I later found out that crabs are very sensitive to pH differences in the water and do not like changes. The artificial salt water and temperature change must have woken them up. That was why they were becoming hostile.
Seeing the crabs become active, and not wanting to deal with moving crab limbs while cooking, made me I decide to take my friend’s advice, by sticking them in the freezer. Apparently, putting crabs in the freezer tricks the crab into thinking that it’s back in the cold waters of the ocean floor. And if they get comfortable enough, they would go to sleep.
Deep sleep = no struggling crabs = manageable cooking = happy cook… and we all want a happy cook.
Mr GC was commissioned once again, to do this important task: putting the crabs in the freezer. He fished them out of the sink and stuck them in the freezer with a little struggle, as one of them latched on from behind and did not want to let go. But, after a little wiggle here and there, in they went to their deep sleep.
But when the time came to put the crabs in the boiling water, we noticed that both crabs hadn’t been very deep in their slumber. One of them had slow reaction, but the other was still a little active. Mr GC did me the honors and put them both in the pot. The first one went in without a struggle. The second one… well, let’s just say that I heard crab screams in my head.
All in all, this had been a crabby experience. I managed to get my cooking done, learn a new recipe, satiate my craving, be scarred and attained a biology lesson in all. I even took a snapshot of the dish I made, just for the memory.
Even though I could not bring myself to kill the animal, I had no problems eating it. I guess I’m just that sort of animal lover that loves meat too much to give it up. Call me a hypocrite!
I DO NOT eat crab that often. It was just that 2 weekends. Otherwise, I will not eat crab unless it was a special occasion. *Wail* Unfair of you to accuse me of eating too much crab and then having the cheek to complain about it!
BTW, looking at the end result of your crabescapade, you have made me what crabs again…
It is going to be a never ending cycle. I eat and tell you about it, you get tempted and eat crab and tell me about it and then I get tempted to have crabs again. *Argh*