Is There Such A Thing As Too Much Crab?

A visit down to Folkstone over the bank holiday weekend brought me back to London armed with a few goodies courtesy of the bright blue sea.

Four brown crabs needing to be dressed was something I soon discovered was going to be a pretty mean feat. It's one thing to pick, suck and prod at a crab piece for instant gratification and quite another when the eating pleasure is to be delayed. After three long hours picking through the one big beast and three smaller crustaceans, I swore I would never attempt to dress a crab again. There were about a half a dozen little cuts on my hands, crab shell littered the floor and the air was heavy with the salty, wet stench of the sea. Next time I want to eat crab I'll wait till I get back to Malaysia or I'll buy a neatly dressed crab from my local fishmonger who sells them for a very reasonable £5 each.

After all my hard work I was almost tempted to stash the meat away in the freezer until I had managed to get some of the crab smell off my hands (ohhh a few weeks or so ... ) but I went ahead and dressed some of my beautifully picked crab anyway. Some sweet white meat, some brown meat (for that lovely richness), mayonnaise, lemon juice, paprika and ketchup was mixed up for my afternoon snack of crab on toast.

The next day the crab became part of a sandwich - dressed with a little mayonnaise, paprika, ketchup, sweet chili sauce, fish sauce (fishy on fishy = quite delicious), finely chopped coriander and lime juice served on tomato bread with cucumber. Yum ... much nicer than the day before. The other sandwich for the day was ham with grain mustard, rocket and cucumber.

The rest of the crab is now sitting in the freezer waiting for me to decide what to do with it .... chili, garlic and lemon crab with pasta or crab cakes? We'll see ...