![]() ![]() Then I pour in a couple cans of beer (cheap stuff) and some kalamansi juice, bring that to a boil, and then dump in the live crabs. If you’ve got a steaming rack, that would work too. The cilantro and lemongrass serve two purposes: aroma, and to elevate and keep the crabs out of the steaming liquid. Then I criss-cross some lemongrass along the bottom to form a lattice pattern. I take the biggest pot I have (a 7qt dutch oven) and place an entire bunch of cilantro across the bottom of the pot to form a bed. Then I steam them in a simple solution of beer, kalamansi juice, lemongrass, and cilantro. To prepare blue crabs, I first dump them into a large collander in my sink and run some cold water over them to rinse. Luckily for me, I was able to gather a dozen blue crabs into my bag with nary a digit missing from my hands. I have a feeling my fishmonger and his cohorts behind the counter must wager on which idiot customers get pinched by a crab. You remember my fishmonger don’t you? He laughs at me still for no reason at all. And during my frenzy of knocking on crabs, plucking them up with my tongs, and depositing them into my bag, I hear the fish monger laughing from behind the fish counter. I wasn’t paying much attention to the sex of the crabs I was choosing, as I was more concerned with having my finger crab-clawed. Female crabs are especially prized by us Filipinos as we love to suck the eggs from the crab bodies. Male blue crabs have a Washington Monument-shaped “apron” on its underside (think phallic), and female blue crabs have an “apron” shaped like the U.S. You can also identify the sex of Maryland Blue Crabs by their locally apropriate Washington D.C. You’ll know them by the hissing (I swear I heard them hissing), clicking, and knocking sounds they emit and their extra-snippety claws. Then I choose the meanest motherfuckers in the barrel. The way I choose is I gently tap on the top of the crab with my tongs to see if the crab is alive or not (never cook dead crabs). Besides keeping all of your fingers, there really isn’t much to picking live crabs. ![]() All that was missing was a sign that read “Live Crabs, short tongs, pick at your own risk.”ĭespite the too-short tongs, I snapped open a paper bag, flipped open the lid of wet newspaper, and began corralling some damn feisty crabs. Next to the crab bin were a stack of brown paper bags and a pair of tongs that I thought were an index finger-length too short. The live blue crabs were piled into a large plastic bin, and a set of wet newspaper (Asian Journal, I believe) were placed on top of the undulating pile. The crabs I came across were set in front of the fish counter at my Filipino market so that the customer can choose his own crabs rather than the fish monger choosing the crabs. You probably think this post is about you. So when I recently spotted a bin of live Maryland Blue Crabs at my friendly neighborhood Filipino market, I knew I had to steam a pot of the tasty critters to offset the crabbiness going on in my own life these days. Who knew?Īnyways, the best way to counter such crab mentality is to stay above the fray and ignore the high school antics, gossip, and smack-talk of crabby people, and instead indulge in the sweet meat, rich “mustard”, and delectable roe of the crabby crustaceans that dwell under water. I imagine that as the one crab is about to claw his way out, all the other hater-crabs below are talking behind his back (“I worked way harder than he did to escape this wretched pot, so there’s no way I’m letting him outta here without a nip at his leg!) and even telling lies and spreading rumors (“Hey, I heard that crab up there has got crabs! Gross!). The ol’ Crabs in the Pot story where one crab tries to escape from the pot, only to be pulled back down into the pile by another crab. Anyone can spell ‘ Borborygmus‘”) to cooking a decent plate of adobo (“Your adobo is OK, but my Lola’s is much better”), someone will almost surely exhibit some sort of crab mentality to let you know just how mediocre they think you really are. Anything from winning a spelling bee (“Dude, you got lucky. No matter the measure of success a person may have, there will inevitably be someone else that may try to negate or trivialize that success.
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