Talking to Your Food

Today my husband didn't spend his usual hard day at work. Instead, he poshed it up on a 30 foot boat with his work buddies and boss on a "team work outing." What did they do on the boat? They went crabbing.

Yes, crabbing. You know, throw a few chickens in a cage and throw the cage overboard. A-1 team building activity.

All joking aside, Chainwhip did come back with some mighty fine crabs - 2 rock crabs and 2 dungeness crabs. He called me while in the midst of his team building efforts to inform me, "We have to cook the crabs TONIGHT!"

Lucky for our bellies, my mother stashed a bag of black beans on the refrigerator door and I had a supply of garlic and green onions. Here I come black bean crab - a Chinese classic. Except, I've never cooked crab before, and I only vaguely remember my mother cooking crab when I was a child.

So what do you do when you're in an emergency cooking bind? You head to our buddy, our pal, the internet. And while I'm conferring with my confidant, I discover more than plethora of black bean crab recipes, I find a helpful "How to Make Crab in Black Bean Sauce" video on VideoJug.


How To Make Crab In Black Bean Sauce

I'm missing a couple of ingredients, I omit the Sambal Olek for the dumpling's sake, and I avoid cumbersome activities like measuring ingredients. But actually the sauce isn't the biggest challenge, it's dealing with the crabs.

Chainwhip comes home with his crabs in a small ice chest. Xiaozhuzhu is interested and surprisingly unafraid of the crawly creatures. We poke at the crabs. We get them to run around the sink a bit. We shower them with water to agitate them.





Then it's time for the dirty deed. It's time to cook the critters.

I opt to boil them first because I'm a little leary about cracking them open while they're alive. So Chainwhip kindly drops the first dungeness crab into my pot of boiling water. Except I didn't put enough water in the pot and poor Mr. Crab is experiencing a painful death by only having his bottom half boiled. When I get the water level right and drop in Mr. Dungeness Crab Number 2, I feel much better. Except Number 2 is blowing bubbles, moving around, and poking his eyeballs-on-a-stick out of the water. I find myself talking to him.

I'm sorry Mr. Crab, but you're our dinner. Don't fight it. That's right, just go to sleep.

This makes me feel better. Not that I really believe that the crab I'm boiling to death feels any comfort from my words, but I guess it makes me feel better because I'm not just any old ruthless cook killing her crustaceans with nary a tear.

By the time I get to boiling the rock crabs, I'm already a hardened pro - not a peep out of my mouth and not a drop of sympathy.

In the end, we had a joyous crab meal with the dumpling saying "more crab more crab" as we cracked shells to gently extract some sweet meat for the tot. For a gal who's afraid of spiders, fruit flies and caterpillars, she sure did love those crabs.