What I Ate Today

This is a family recipe my mum made up, one I grew up with which would always be a special treat. My family are huge seafood fans, especially crab. You need whole crabs so we usually only eat this when we can get a fresh supply. On our last visit home mum prepared it for us again. It’s still among one of my favourite curries.

The crab is cooked and served in it’s shell. I’ve tried curries with just crab meat and they don’t work anywhere near as well. It takes a lot of effort to eat, generally you end up spending about 20 minutes extracting the meat before you can get round to finally eating – it’s all part of the fun though. The first time Jenny ate this she got a bit freaked out, she’s not the biggest seafood fan and the crabs looked like giant spiders.

We usually use British crabs which are all from the Cancer Pagurus species. Quite often we have Cromer Crabs which tend to be a little bit sweeter. Other types of crabs will probably work just as well.

Ingredients

These are rough amounts, mum just adds the ingredients by eye:

• 3 crabs
• 3 large onions
• 1 large tin of tomatoes
• 1/3 block of creamed coconut
• Salt
• Chilli powder
• Turmeric
• Garam masala powder
• Paprika
• Ginger
• Garlic

Method

1. Use a small hammer to break the crabs up. Remove all the non-flesh innards. Break into large chunks – walking/swimming legs, carapace (abdomen) and the claw. Crack big sections (but don’t separate) so that the sauce can get in and it can be broken when you get round to eating it.
2. Liquidize the onions. Add a bit of sunflower oil to the saucepan and brown the onions.
3. Once the onions are golden brown add the coconut and fry for a couple of minutes.
4. Add the salt, chilli powder, turmeric, garam masala, paprika, ginger and garlic and fry for another couple of minutes.
5. Add the tomatoes and a little bit of water and let it cook for a few minutes – until it is thick rich gravy.
6. Add the crab and let it cook for about 15 minutes.

Eating

We tend to serve this with Basmati rice. To eat it, you have to use your hands to start with. First you find a walking leg and break that apart. You then use the end of that leg to help extract the meat from the rest of the crab making sure to suck all the juices out of it. We tend to have a graveyard in the centre of the table to put any empty shells. Eventually you’ll end up with a pile of meat which you can mix into the sauce and use cutlery to eat with the rice. If you’ve been slow you might have to re-heat things before tucking in.