The Sinosphere · Volume 32, The Stocking, the Shelter and the Spice Route
Typhoon Shelter Crab (避風塘炒蟹)
Causeway Bay
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 30 minutes
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Causeway Bay, 1960s and 1970s. Invented on a boat, banned from the water in 1995, and still cooked the same way ashore.
As tradition built it
Serves 2 to 3. About 30 minutes.
Ingredients
- 1 large live crab (about 1 kg), jointed and cracked
- as available cornflour, for dusting
- 150 g garlic, very finely minced
- 4 dried chillies, roughly chopped
- 2 tablespoons fermented black beans, rinsed and roughly chopped
- as available lemongrass, finely sliced
- as available spring onion, sliced
- for deep frying neutral oil, for deep-frying and stir-frying
Method
- Dust the crab pieces lightly in cornflour.
- Deep-fry the garlic separately in neutral oil until crisp and pale gold; this is heat-sensitive to the point of seconds, so watch it closely and remove the moment it colours, draining well. Set aside.
- Deep-fry the crab pieces briefly until just cooked through, then drain.
- In a very hot wok with a little oil, stir-fry the dried chilli and fermented black beans briefly, then add the crab and toss at high heat.
- Off the heat, toss through the fried garlic, lemongrass and spring onion at the very last moment, so the garlic keeps its crispness.
- Serve immediately; this dish does not hold or reheat well, and that is part of its point.
What a modern chef changes
Heat, timing and nothing held.
Rungs 2 and 3
Method
- Use a Big Green Egg with a carbon-steel wok insert over roaring lump charcoal for the actual stir-fry step, genuinely closer to the heat this dish was invented for than any home hob (rung 2).
- Fry the garlic in a small, dedicated batch just before service, never earlier, treating it exactly as a chef's-eye, seconds-sensitive step rather than something that can be prepared ahead (rung 3).
- Grind the dried chilli and a little Sichuan peppercorn fresh in a dedicated spice grinder immediately before cooking, rather than using pre-ground chilli flakes, for a sharper, more aromatic finish.