Chilli Crab - Mum Cooks

I love chilli crab but I don’t really enjoy eating it outside. It’s always so messy and the sauces will be dripping from the fingers. It is a waste not to lick the fingers but it is also not so pleasing to lick the fingers in public. Dilemma, always. And the clumsy me may have the crab claw, shell or sauce flying all over and stain my clothes or others.

So I really love it when my mum cooks this. I can eat it as carefree as I want at home. I don’t cook this myself as I don’t dare to ‘silence’ the crabs. So we devised this plan of bringing my mum and the crabs to our house for this filming. And this gets us to think of a new series - Mum cooks. We will get my mum to cook a few more dishes and we will film her cooking them.

Chilli Crab

Prepping my mum for the recipe filming is not too difficult as she has seen us doing it a few times. We prepare the sauces with the measuring spoons instead of her usual way of ‘agar agar’ pour into the wok. But she needs constant reminders before she adds things into the wok before the phone camera is ready. It was fun filming her doing the cooking.

We tweak her recipe a bit. She normally uses ketchup. But we hate ketchup and hence replace it with tomato paste. We also suggested adding tau cheo (fermented soy bean paste) to add additional umami into the dish.

The crabs that we used this time are not as big but they are fresh and alive. Crabs need to be killed just before cooking for the meat to be firm and good.

Ingredients

4             Small crabs

4             Garlic

4             Shallot

2             Eggs

2 tbsp    Oil

1 tsp      Tau Cheo (fermented soy bean paste)

6 tbsp    Tomato paste

1 tbsp    Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp      Chilli paste

300ml    Water

Instructions

1. If you don't dare to kill crabs, then forget about this recipe and eat this in a restaurant.
2. Use chopsticks to poke into the crabs and they will stop moving in a few minutes.
3. Wash and clean the crabs. Peel off the shell. Chop the body in halves and pull off the two claws. So each crab will have 5 parts: shell, 2 body parts with legs and 2 claws. Put the body and claws together and put the shell separately.
4. Mince the garlic and shallot.
5. Heat up oil in a wok.
6. Add the garlic and shallot and fry for a few minutes until it's fragrant.
7. Add the crabs into the wok and fry for a few minutes.
8. Add tau cheo and tomato paste. Mix well and cook for a few minutes.
9. Pour in the water and bring it to a boil.
10. Add Worcestershire sauce and chilli paste and mix well.
11. Place the crab shells on top.
12. Cover the wok and let it braise for a couple of minutes.
13. The crab shells will turn bright orange colour when cooked.
14. Crack and beat 2 eggs and pour into the gravy.
15. If you want the sauce to be thicker, add a few tbsp of slurry (mix 2 tbsp of corn flour to 3 or 4 tbsp of water).
16. Let it cook for a couple of minutes and off the heat.
17. Serve on a plate and eat with some steamed or pan fried mantou.

You can watch the cooking video in my YouTube channel.