After our let down at dinner the other night, we decided to have a dinner give soft shell crabs a go ourselves. I've wanted to cook soft shell crabs for a while now, but because you can't purchase them individually, I've put it off, hoping that one day some friends would be interested and we could buy a box of them.
*Tonight's...the night*
Tonight, Marissa was the chef and I was her assistant while Teresa napped. I started off helping to crumb some slices of eggplant, which we would later deepfry.
Step 2: dip in beaten egg
Step 3: coat in bread crumbs with herbs
We made batter using plain flour, eggs, wasabi, chilli and soda water. I think that's what we put into it. I can't remember...I just remember having to get the potato masher out to try to get the wasabi to dissolve.
Marissa's brother had bought a state-of-the-art deep fryer for their mother. Marissa was using it for the first time tonight. It has a wire mesh basket inside that rotates while cooking.
We had just turned the computer on to google how to prepare the crabs when Teresa woke up and was able to tell us. I prepared the soft shell crab by pulling off its gills and the triangular flap on its underside. The shell was soft and the texture was like leather or suede. It was a bit unsettling to handle them at first, but I got used to it quickly.
We dunked the crabs into the bowl of batter and Teresa gave us a hand cooking them in the deepfryer. I had brought some prawns which we defrosted and also deepfried some of those so that we could have two each. There was so much batter remaining so Teresa got some dumplings (I think they were pork) and we deepfried those too.Marissa gave her parents a call and asked them to come over to join us. Mrs Pelle had just made some pasta for their dinner so she was going to bring that along. YAY! When Mr and Mrs Pelle arrived, we broke out the Smirnoff Green Apple Vodka and had it with soda water. It was so refreshing! Mr Pelle polished his off before I'd even had two sips!
We set up the outside table to eat outdoors. We had candles and citronella burning. It was romantic! We started with Mrs Pelle's pasta.
I had mine with lots of grated parmesan and chillies from Mr Pelle's garden. I didn't want to overeat since we still had all the seafood to follow, but I couldn't resist having a second serve. Neither could Marissa heehee!
After the pasta...
We soaked up the delicious oil with some homemade bread that one of the Pelle's friends made for them.Next...all the deepfried foods came out of the oven where they were being kept warm.
herb crumbed eggplant slices
deep fried prawns & soft shell crab
apple, walnut & blue cheese salad with spinach & rocket
During dinner, I bit my tongue and it was the hardest I'd bitten it because I could taste blood and there was a searing pain and then numbness.
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