Tuesday, January 18, 2011

curried crab & rice

I've spent the last couple of days getting caught up on my Google Reader and that's meant reading a lot of food bloggers talk about some pretty amazing food. In the midst of all the hundreds of recipes posted, there was one whose photos made my mouth water. A pile of crab in a red curry sauce served with a bowl of rice.

I was supposed to go to dinner tonight with two former colleagues but because of my 4 a.m. bed time and all-night coughathon wasn't really up for going into the city and hanging out so dinner at home was the solution. I decided that rather than the leftover beouf bourignon I made for dinner last night as tonight's meal I absolutely, positively must have crab.

Dragging Alan to Safeway, we picked up two crabs, cilantro, jalapeno and ginger for the meal. In cooking the sauce my version came out a bit more watery than the photos - this is my fault: I like to add stock to coconut milk to break up the richness. I also found upon opening up my red curry that a science experiment had grown in the jar so I was forced to improvise: green curry paste, red pepper sauce and siracha chili sauce. After that was all boiling I added in some ginger, the jalapenos and green onion. We pounded the crab so the curry would reach the meat and let it boil for a couple of minutes. I put the rice a bowl, covered the rice in the curry sauce and then topped with the crab.

It tasted marvelous.

It was messy as hell.

And now here we are at 10 p.m. suffering because it was far too rich for both of our stomachs. Maybe next time I take it easy on the coconut milk.