"three candles? three years to thirty?"
".. blow the candles" " ...make a wish"
"..i know, what you need badly? hahah..make a wish u can save $X in the next few months.."

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earlier on, my culinary adventures.. i made CHILLI CRAB for my baby's b'day. it's big deal for me okay, since i seldom cook..and i shall try to note it down in the same way as one of my fav netizens, fairy, documents them...and also so that my cooking gal pal advisors can see the result of it all..heh..one of em even conspiringly told me that "if all else fails"..i can get the ready made sauce! but i did it, from scratch. no ready made sauces!

i have spurts of interest in cooking and most often i cook something which my mum doesnt normally cook..and since her attitude towards cooking is different from mine..me being more adventurous..she often shakes her head, and stands aside as i make a mess in the kitchen..we never had home-cooked chilli crabs..so she told me to consult my gal pals who cook..heh.. and so i did..

but i got different variations of the recipes from different people and even from the google search results..but eventually i found a few common essential ingredients..but i didnt follow any fix quantities..same as my attitude towards cooking, which is experimential and "just do it"..i made this dish with a large dose of "agak-ration" or better known as estimation..essentially to follow the taste bud as one proceeds on..




didnt i say, the dish is surprisingly simple to make..the difficult part was choosing the crabs (i got help from this ahpek at shingseong...) and of coz manhandling the crabs (thanked my dad for helping me with this)and then having to crack and clean them .. after the 'dirty work' has been done..we start with the cooking or the pre-cooking. information i got from my advisors, i could steam, boil or quick fry these morsels beforehand to semi-cook them. i chose to steam them..as one told me, so that i can contain the 'essence' in the crabs..while at the same time collect some of the 'sweat' from the steaming to make crab stock. OK.



next comes the part where you will really regret if your cooker hob is spoilt. that is to fry , saute or whatever the base spice. which is the dried chilli that has been grounded with some garlic, a lil bit of ginger, and, my mum chipped in here as she always can never miss, 'dried shrimps", in her cooking



after you've got that base spice to be sizzling and fragrant..you can add the other ingredients that give the dish its 'body'..that will be the stock, some tomato sauce, light sauce, oyster sauce and sugar. this is where my "agak-ration" comes in. i added the ingredients to the taste bud's desire..or as the makcik says it "secukup rasa". but me being the novice cook, had to be doubly sure and asked the expert a.k.a. mum to do a taste test..



next part, is where i made a mistake. that is addition of egg..it should be the very last.. but i added it before i added the crabs. but nevermind..the white egg bits act as pseudo crab meat as well as to thicken the sauce. a lil bit of conrstarch does the job to thicken the sauce as well..



last but not least of coz..the crabs go into the gravy. i dint use a big kuali as all expert chilli crabs cooks are probably using..so i had to put in a lil bit more effort here mixing them and bathing them in the gravy..



and finally....after a few final taste tests..it's done!
does it look like the real thing? wait, it IS the real thing! heheheh...



the ultimate test of coz came when he rang the bell to pick me up. by this time i have changed from the smelly crab cook mode to the girlfriend mode, all dressed up. i told him we are having dinner in when i opened the door..and said it was going to be "chilli crab"...his first expression said "macam betul ke ni?"..heheheh so i led him to the kitchen..and then to the dining table..

and his first word on it.."very good"..i am not kidding!



it is said to be our national dish coz it has elements of the different styles of cooking from the various races..now there is also the angmoh element..we had it with french baguette from delifrance. toasted hot to wipe clean the spicy chilli crab..and i have just to down it with some cool sharp (cannot have sweet or cloying drink with heavy tasting dish) sparkling juice.





okay, no more snapping. it's chow time!


.....and at the end..my parents were amused he could take so much crab from me..heheh. no surprise.



didnt i say he loves his crabs..oh, this time, make it MY crabs!

:)

-oh..last weekend when i did another dish..one madame said on online chat..i shud learn to cook malay dishes..yah..i think i shud..heheh jadi full fledge makcik..my mum thinks it's difficult to teach me in the kitchen..so instead how about anyone giving me the new 'asma laili cookbook' as pressie..baru betul boleh jadi mak cik bedah..lol!