Recipe - Singapore Chilli Crab

Stephen Ceideburg
4 Blue crabs
3 teaspoon Tamarind pulp
Three fourths cup Boiling water
2 Chopped onions
1 Piece fresh ginger, 5 cm
2 To 3 birdseye chillies
3 Green onions, chopped
2 teaspoon Cornflour
3 tablespoon Oil
3 teaspoon Sugar
2 teaspoon Tomato paste

This Singapore dish is a classic and, like all classics, it is superb.
Serve it with plain rice.

Boil a large pot of water and drop in 4 green blue swimmers. Boil them
rapidly for 4 minutes then tip the contents of the pot into a colander to
drain. When cool enough to handle, chop crabs into quarters with a cleaver
or large knife, leaving legs at tached to body. With a hammer. gently
crack the claws and areas of harder shell.

Put 3 teaspoons tamarind pulp to soak in Three fourths cup boiling water. Finely chop
2 onions, grate 5 cm piece fresh ginger, finely slice 23 birdseye chillies
(or to taste) and chop 3 green (spring) onions. Mix 2 teaspoons cornflour
with a little water.

In a large wok or pan, heat 3 tablespoons of oil and stir fry onion,
ginger and 2/3 of the chopped chillies for a couple of minutes. Add crab
pieces and strained tamarind water, lower heat and simmer for 34 minutes.
Lift the crab out onto a serving dish and to the mixture in the wok add 3
teaspoons sugar and 2 of tomato paste. Stir, add dissolved cornflour and
stir again until the mixture thickens. Pour over the crab, garnish with the
rest of the chillies and the spring onions and serve.

From an article by Meryl Constance in The Sydney Morning Herald, 5/18/93.
Courtesy Mark Herron.

From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at www.synapse.com/~gemini