Following on from my ‘how to humanely kill a crab’ post here, I promised y’all my crab sauce. So here it is.
Ingredients for 1kg of crab in the shell, in pieces (serves 2):
- 3 large garlic cloves
- Thumb sized piece of ginger, peeled
- 2 long red chillies (more if you like really hot)
- 50g onion
- sesame oil for frying
For the sauce
- 2 tablespoons fish sauce
- 3 tablespoons sweet chilli sauce
- 60ml Chinese Shaoxing wine
- 2 tablespoons tomato puree
- 1 tablespoon tomato ketchup
- 1 tablespoon tamarind puree
Method
Mix all the sauce ingredients into a bowl and stir well.
Make sure you’ve sectioned the raw crab and cracked its claws so as to let in all the flavours:
Chop garlic, ginger, chilli and onion very finely:
Add a couple of tablespoons of the sesame oil to a wok and fry over a high heat until fragrant and slightly browned. 
Add the crab pieces, and turn with a wide spatula for a minute or so, until they just start to change colour:
Then add the sauce. Coat the crab thoroughly and cover the pan.
Lower the heat to medium and cook for 10 – 15 minutes, occasionally removing the lid to carefully turn the crab and baste it in the sauce.
Garnish with chopped spring onion and coriander, if desired. Tuck in with hands, napkins and any crab cutlery you may have. I like to poke about with a bamboo skewer for those awkward, reticent bits inside the claws.
I used a pair of mud crabs, but blue swimmers would be great too. This also works well for prawns!
lefthandedchopsticks 