Chili Crab (Crab in Sour and Spicy Sauce)

1 February, 2011 (09:10) | Chinese Food Culture | By: admin

Chili Crab (Crab in Sour and Spicy Sauce)

January 30th, 2011 | Chinese, Chinese Recipes, Malaysian recipes, Singaporean Recipes | 6 Comments

We will be leaving for Malaysia to celebrate Chinese New Year tomorrow morning. Before I leave, I feel obliged to share a very delicious Recipe with you, so here is my crab in sour and spicy sauce (酸辣蟹), or known as “chili crab” in Singapore. The timing couldn’t be better as Chinese (Lunar) New Year is just a few days away and I am sure many of you are scouring the web for a great recipe to share with the family.

I have an equally tasty home-style chili crab recipe (my late mother’s recipe) but this rendition with the eggy, sweet, sour, and spicy sauce is perfect for entertaining guests or simply when you want to have a crab feast. The sauce pairs beautifully with Chinese mantou—steamed or fried—as the bun sops up the scrumptious and addictive spicy and sour sauce. I prefer the soft and puffy steamed buns…

I made this for my good friends E and N last weekend and they practically begged me to share the recipe. I took them to the Asian market and got them the “starter kit” or ingredients to prepare this dish. For the crab, we are lucky as Dungeness crab is in season and the market will clean and cut it up for you. Save the shell and pick out the tamale or mustard inside the shell. Add them in the sauce and you will be rewarded with a richly flavorful sauce that you just can’t stop eating. You can also prepare this dish with mud crab, blue swimmer crab, or stone crab but I just love the fleshy Dungeness crab.

Enjoy!

Chili Crab (Crab in Sour and Spicy Sauce) Recipe

Ingredients:

2 – 2.5 lb Dungeness crab
3 tablespoons oil
3 garlic, minced
1 inch ginger, peeled and minced
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch + 2 tablespoons water (mix well)
Ł egg, beaten
Salt to taste
12 steamed buns or mantou

Sour and Spicy Sauce

5 tablespoons ketchup
5 tablespoons Lingham’s Hot Sauce
1 heaping tablespoon oyster sauce
1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
1/2 teaspoon Chinese rice vinegar or lime juice to taste
1 cup water

Method:

Clean the crab and cut into 6 pieces, drain the crab and discard the water seeping out of the crab. Pick out the tamale (or mustard) inside the crab shell, set aside. Discard the shell.

Mix all the ingredients in the Sour and Spicy Sauce in a small bowl. Set aside.

Heat up a wok and add the oil. When the oil is heated, add the minced garlic and ginger and stir fry until aromatic or when they turn slightly brown. Add the crab and the tamale into the wok, stirring for about 10 seconds. Add the Sour and Spicy Sauce, stir to blend well with the crab. Cover the wok with its lid and let cook for about 4-5 minutes.

Uncover the wok and slowly add the cornstarch mixture into the sauce. Stir the sauce until it thickens. Add the egg into the sauce and stir a few times so the egg is distributed evenly in the sauce. Cook for another 30 seconds or so, add salt to taste if needed. Dish out and serve immediately with the steaming hot buns.

Cook’s Notes:

If you can’t find Chinese steamed buns where you are, you can try out this recipe by Almost Bourdain.
I strongly recommend Lingham’s Hot Sauce for the best result. You can purchase it online at AsianSupermarket365.com.
If you can’t find Lingham’s Hot Sauce, you can make this dish with Sriracha but do adjust the quantity according to your taste as Sriracha is very spicy. If you use Sriracha, do add sugar into the sauce.

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Sweet and Sour Fried Tofu

2 August, 2010 (03:48) | Chinese food recipes | By: admin

Sweet and Sour Fried
To celebrate the upcoming Chinese New Year, I will probably be sharing a series of Chinese recipes with you on Rasa Malaysia, and it started with my ginger and scallion fish Recipe a few days ago. These days, I have Christine of Christine’s recipes here with her “Rainbow Fried Tofu” dish—or sweet and sour fried tofu. Christine’s Recipes offer a good selection of homey Chinese Recipes which she makes for her family. If you read Chinese, you need to also check out her Chinese weblog. Please give her your warmest welcome!

Rasa Malaysia is one of my preferred food blogs that I’ve subscribed for a long time. I definitely admire Bee’s cooking, blogging and photography skills. When she asked me if I was interested in writing up a guest post, immediately I sent her a “YES�€ as it’s my honor indeed. Thanks to Bee for letting me have a chance to share my favored recipe—sweet and sour fried tofu—on her blog. Here you go.

We�€™ve got lots of various Chinese dishes with sweet and sour sauce. Just name a couple of, sweet and sour chicken, sweet and sour pork, sweet and sour beef, which are traditional and nicely accepted in unique countries. I posted these old-fashioned recipes on my humble weblog too. Whenever I go into a Chinese restaurant, I spot numerous Aussie folks would pick a dish in sweet and sour sauce. I can’t image how my Aussie friends are crazy about the taste of sweet and sour. Recently I created a dish on my own using this make-Aussie-crazy sauce with my preferred deep-fried tofu, feeling genuinely great with both of the intriguing combination of ingredients and colorful outlook. So I also name it as “Rainbow Fried Tofu��. This dish goes very properly with Jasmine rice, or served as an appetizer…(get sweet and sour fried tofu recipe after the jump)

toufu

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Sweet and Sour Pork

27 June, 2010 (09:19) | Chinese Food Culture | By: admin

Sweet and Sour Pork with pineapple, carrots and bell peppers

Rhonda Parkinson

This sweet and sour pork is prepared American-style with more batter and deep-fried twice for extra crispiness.

Serves 4 to 6
Did you like this recipe for Sweet and Sour Pork? Are there any changes you would make? Feel free to share your views and read feedback on this Sweet and Sour Pork Recipe by other readers.

Ingredients:

3/4 pound pork tenderloin
2 – 3 teaspoons soy sauce
Pinch of cornstarch
Sauce:
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons ketchup
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water or reserved pineapple juice
1/4 cup vinegar
1 tablespoon cornstarch dissolved in 4 tablespoons water
Batter:
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup cornstarch
1 egg white, lightly beaten
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/3 cup warm water, as needed
Other:
1 carrot
1/2 red bell pepper
1/2 green bell pepper
1/2 cup pineapple chunks
3 cups oil for deep-frying, or as needed

Preparation:

Directions for sweet and sour pork
Cut the pork into 1-inch cubes. Marinate in the soy sauce and cornstarch for 20 minutes.

To prepare the sauce, in a small bowl, combine the sugar, ketchup, dark soy sauce, salt, water or juice and vinegar. Set aside. In a separate bowl, dissolve the cornstarch in the water. Set aside.

Peel the carrot and chop on the diagonal into 1-inch pieces. Cut the bell peppers in half, remove the seeds and cut into cubes.

Heat the oil for deep–frying to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

For the batter, combine the flour and cornstarch. Stir in the egg white and vegetable oil. Add as much of the warm water as is needed to form a thick batter that is neither too dry or too moist. (The batter should not be runny, but should drop off the back of a spoon).

Dip the marinated pork cubes in the batter. Deep-fry in batches, taking care not to overcrowd the wok. Deep-fry the pork until it is golden brown. Remove and drain on paper towels.

(If desired you can deep-fry the pork at second time to make it extra crispy. Make sure the oil is back up to 375 before you begin deep-frying again).

To prepare the sweet and sour sauce, bring the sauce ingredients to a boil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the carrot, green pepper, and pineapple. Bring to a boil again and thicken with cornstarch mixture, stirring. Check the sauce one more time and adjust seasonings, adding salt and/or vinegar if desired. Serve hot over the deep-fried pork. Serve the sweet and sour pork over rice.

The Sweet and Sour Pork recipe has an average rating of 4.4, based on 20 reviews.

http://chinesefood.about.com/od/pork/r/sweetsourpork.htm

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Sweet and Sour Sauce

27 June, 2010 (06:35) | Chinese Food Culture | By: admin

A quick and easy recipe that can be poured over a dish or used as a dipping sauce. A Recipe for sweet and sour sauce using black rice vinegar can be found here.

Yields about 1/2 cup

Cook Time: 5 minutes

Total Time: 5 minutes

Ingredients:

1/3 cup white or rice vinegar (Note: rice vinegar gives better results)
4 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon ketchup
1 teaspoon soy sauce
2 teaspoons cornstarch mixed with 4 teaspoons water

Preparation:

Mix the vinegar, brown sugar, ketchup, and soy sauce together and bring to a boil in a small pot. Mix together the cornstarch and water, add to the other ingredients and stir to thicken.

(If desired, you can add 1 green pepper, cut into chunks, and pineapple chunks as desired after adding the cornstarch. For a thicker sauce, increase the cornstarch to 4 teaspoons while keeping the water constant.)

Reader Comments:
You have probably heard this before but I tried your sweet and sour sauce using rice vinegar, and absolutely love it. My daughter is allergic to some red food colourings so we generally avoid sweet and sour. (Your recipe) was soooo good I decided to make a second batch ; unfortunately I was now out of rice vinegar. Well…white vinegar just doesn’t cut it girl !!! ��I am now going to make sure there is rice vinegar at all times in my pantry. From Lynn

The Sweet and Sour Sauce recipe has an average rating of 3.9, based on 33 reviews.

http://chinesefood.about.com/od/sauces/r/sweetandsour.htm

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