This is a great recipe which was inspired by many evenings in seafood restaurants and trips to Singapore. I haven’t tried it with mud crabs, but there is no reason why this recipe wouldn’t work equally (you would probably have to fry mud crabs for a little longer as their shells are thicker). And it’s so much easier than I thought it would be. The only time consuming part is cleaning and preparing the crabs. I use an electric pan because it has a lid and has the widest base of all the pans I have access to. Depending on your appetite, 1 blue swimmer crab per person is usually enough.
Ingredients:
6 Blue Swimmer Crabs
TO FRY
½ cup peanut oil
3 large cloves of garlic, chopped
3 tablespoons of ginger, sliced finely
3 small birds-eye chillies, chopped (if you don’t like the heat, remove the seeds from the chillies, or use less of them)
FOR THE SAUCE
½ cup tomato sauce
¼ cup sweet chilli sauce
¼ cup hoi sin sauce
3 tablespoons of fish sauce
1 cup vegetable or fish stock
1 tablespoon of sugar
THE GARNISH AND OPTIONAL EXTRAS
2 spring onions, sliced
1 tablespoon of coriander, sliced (optional)
10-20 cherry tomatoes (optional)
3-4 banana chillies (optional)
What to do:
PREPARATION
1. Prepare the crabs. A good guide on how to clean a crab is here (steps one to ten only – once you have cut up the crab, do not wash it as the water will make the flesh soggy – if you are having trouble cleaning out the guts, use a wet paper towel).
2. Prepare the sauce in advance by adding the tomato, sweet chilli, hoi sin and fish sauce in a large bowl and mixing it together. Then add the stock and mix together thoroughly.
FRYING THE CRABS
3. Heat the oil in the pan to a high heat (the reason why you use peanut oil is because it doesn’t start to burn, like olive oil, at high heat)
4. Add the garlic, ginger and chilli and fry for a minute or so
5. Place the crab in the pan, turning each piece over so that it can fry in the oil
ADDING THE SAUCE
6. After all the crab has been tossed through the hot oil, pour in the sauce mix.
7. Let the sauce heat up, and toss the crab thoroughly. You actually turn the crab, rather than toss it. I say this because if you are too rough with the crab, the meat will start falling out of the shell.
8. Lower the heat to low-medium, then pop the lid on the pan to let it cook. Check every five minutes or so and toss the crab if necessary.
9. The crab will be cooked when the shell turns red – a good place to check is between the joints, as these are the last places that will go red.
FINAL TOUCHES
10. Just before serving, sprinkle over the spring onion, coriander (not my personal favourite), cherry tomatoes (for some sweetness) and/or chillies (for some extra kick).
Serve with plain steamed rice and a plate of steamed or stir-fried green vegetables.
I haven’t had to thicken the sauce, as it like the consistency of this recipe. If you want to thicken the sauce, while the crabs are cooking in the sauce, add some cornflour mixed with cold water, or an egg (many recipes suggest this, I personally have never tried it).
I promise to post some pics the next time I prepare this dish.
