Kep crab!

Passport & Plate - Cambodian Kep crab

Cambodia | Thursday, March 5, 2015 | 5 photos

Ingredients
Ingredients:
4 large/6 small blue swimmer crabs
3 tbsp sunflower/canola/vegetable oil

2 tbsp palm sugar
2 tbsp Sriracha hot ketchup
2 tbsp oyster sauce
3 tbsp fish sauce

3 tbsp black Kampot pepper
7 strings green peppercorns (fresh or brined)

3 cloves garlic
1 bunch spring onions

Coral lettuce
Semi-ripe tomatoes
Lime

 

How to prepare this recipe
The stars of this dish are great fish sauce, the best black pepper you can find, and green peppercorns on the stem which can be obtained, in season, fresh from your grocer or brined from a Thai retailer.

This is a classic and every time I eat it, it makes me fall in love with pepper again. For best results serve with a large ice cold beer and the rays of the setting sun on your face.

Method:
1)Remove the inedible leg tips from the crabs with a sharp knife. Then in a firm, confident chop, cut the crabs in half up the belly and between the eyes. Remove eyes and gills. You don't need to remove all the mustard as this adds to and forms part of the sauce. Make sure your crabs have come up close to room temperature before you cook them as if they are cold they will cook unevenly.
2) Grate the palm sugar and in a small bowl combine with 1 tsp warm water to form a paste. Add the hot sauce, oyster sauce and fish sauce and stir to combine.
3) Loosely chop garlic and whites of the onions and set aside. Separately chop greens of the onions into 5cm lengths
4) In a medium wok/pot with a tight fitting lid , toast the black peppercorns for 2 mins, set aside till cool and coarsely grind in a mortar and pestle or spice grinder.
5) Return the wok to high heat and wait until smoking, then pour in the oil and when that is smoking, carefully slide in the crab (the wok may spit or flame here, so gently gently!) Stirring every few seconds for 2 minutes your crab should be changing colour from blue to red. At this stage throw in the course ground black pepper, garlic, the whites of the spring onions and the strings of green pepper.
6) Cook for another 4 minutes, continuing to stir, and add the bowl of mixed sauces. Cook another 2 minutes, mixing well to combine ingredients and garnish with the onion greens.
7) Prepare your serving dish with the bed of coral lettuce and sliced tomatoes, and pile your now deliciously aromatic crab on top. Throw on a few lime wedges.

 

The story behind this recipe
Rarely do you eat a meal more than the sum of its parts, celebrating the resilience of a people, embodying the very essence of a place through its abundant produce, as is proffered in the crab shacks of Kep in Cambodia.

Rattling West from Kampot by bike the pungent stench of the Ngov Heng fish sauce factory slaps you like a fermenting fish in the face. The sauce is made from anchovies hauled in by local fishermen and salt garnished from vast salt fields seawards from Kampot, where smiling children pluck low-lying tamarind pods while their fathers carry on the backbreaking work harvesting salt of the earth from glaring white basins.

Corrugated road winds past idyllic fishing villages, labyrinthine with canals reminiscent of Kerala or ancient Venice, distinctive faces streaming by speak of far off traders brought here on rich spice winds.

The road juts inland and dives into a forest of pepper poles heralding entry into one of the great name protected terroirs of the world. Vines grow thick and flush with strings of lustrous pepper berries, shining like caviar on 10 foot totems, the sticky air rich with their aroma. Farmers entice you to pluck and pop berries in your mouth, all giggling as the pepper high comes on. The Khmer Rouge tried to uproot these vines and enslave their cultivators.

Feeling like a spice trader having haggled respectfully for the worlds best pepper, it’s back to the coast and the town of Kep.

Cold beer in hand, on a deck precariously balanced above lapping waves, watching as dots emerge closer from a rock ledge abundant with crab - fishermen lugging bulging crab nets, from which for a few dollars you select your crustaceans. Not a word is said as your host takes the crab off to prepare.

A few cleaver blows and clangs of the wok later and the crab arrives, fragrant with pepper and fish sauce. Basking in the last rays of the warm orange sun, few make a sound but for the cracking and slurping and sucking of crab and beer. A perfect meal.