Thursday 20th January 2011

FOCCACCIA THURSDAY

For out weekly lunch at work today, Ian brought in homemade foccacia with sea salt, herbs and sundried tomatoes. I can only imagine how fantastic it would have tasted straight out of the oven!

We all made up our foccaccias how we liked and then some of us toasted them before devouring them.

In mine I had roast chicken, roasted eggplant,
sundried tomatoes, avocado and cheese.


Oh so delicious!


After work I deliberated whether to postpone cooking my crab another night, but then decided that I should have it tonight. Ideally I should have cooked it last night since I caught it in the morning, but tonight it will still be just as good.

I have never cooked chilli crabs using a crab that I have caught before. Usually when we catch fresh crabs, we take them home and Mum takes care of the cooking! I know how to prepare them because I cooked some soft shell crabs a while back.

First, you have to pry off the triangular piece of shell from the crab's base and remove all the sex organs (I might have the details a bit off because I'm just remembering this). I then twisted off each leg one by one, pried the top of the crab's shell off, and then cut the main body of the crab into half. I rinsed the pieces in water before cooking.

For the sauce, I wanted ginger but we didn't have any in the fridge. So, I chopped up some garlic and sauteed this in some oil in a wok (round based fry pan actually), added half a can of crushed tomatoes, some Thai sweet chilli sauce, some chilli flakes and simmered this sauce for a few minutes. Lastly, I added the crab pieces, making sure to coat the pieces in the sauce by giving it a good stir around. I then added one egg white, mixing it to break it up in the sauce. lid on and allow to simmer for a few minutes. The crab doesn't take long to cook at all.

Garnish with fresh coriander and serve!


So, what was the verdict? I was happy with my first attempt at cooking chilli crab without a recipe. I only wish we had caught more crabs!

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