Fresh Crab Feast at Home

January was a perfect month clear and sunny month that brought perfect fresh load of live crabs at the local Asian markets.  For the great birthday feast, it was a perfect choice for the menu.  But how many crabs for eight guests?  2 crabs per person.  Total of 16 crabs.  And a good size gigantic crabs!  

There are a few basic recipes on how to prepare and cook crab.  You often see the most straight forward way presented by many great chefs and at the fishermen's wharf.  Bring a large kettle pot of water to a full boil and dunk the live crab right into it is one of the popular ways.  Our way is bit more detailed because we like to wash and clean the crab before steaming them or even to stir fry them?

Ingredients:

16 large dungeness crabs with great pincher sizes

5 large fresh ginger nodes, cut into threads about 2 inches long

Soy sauce

sugar

Japanese Rice Vinegar

Tools:  sturdy wooden chop sticks and kitchen mallet.   Kitchen brush to wash crab shells, Chinese steamer.

And a Lots of Appreciation and respect for the crabs that you are about to prepare and partake in.

Pick up the live crab carefully at the end with pinchers away from you.  Back in the old days, the live crabs' pinchers are rubber banded or tied up, but now a day, it's skipped.  

Place the crab in a sanitized sink on its back.  Open the tail end flap and insert the sturdy wooden chop stick and tap it down with the kitchen mallet.  Wait a moment for it to stop moving.

The other way is to insert the chop stick through the mouth and wait a couple of minutes.

Start scrubbing and washing the exterior of the crab under running water.

Place one thumb near its head shell armor and the other hand's thumb near its mouth.  Use a force and separate the shell armor away from the body.  The interior is exposed.

Remove all the lung filaments.

While you are preparing the rest of the crab, start boiling the water in the steamer's pot.

Place the cleaned crabs in the steamer racks.

Cover with lid and start steaming for 30 minutes to an hour, depending on numbers of crabs in the steamer racks.  

Mix soy sauce, rice vinegar together.  Add sugar to taste till it is just right.  Mix well.   Otherwise, add no sugar and use Japanese seasoned vinegar that is already sweetened.  Add gingers that are cut into threads.

Serve and Enjoy!  Beats the cost of paying for 16 fresh Dungeness crabs.

Crabs prepared this way taste very fresh and better tasting meat as there are no muddled boiling water that is cooking the crabs and also sanitizing the crabs in the same pot.  But, every one has their preferred techniques.  Just go for it!

My Grand-daughter's Gymnastic Achievement Cake

I made this cake for my grand-daughter who worked very hard for her very first gymnastic achievement presentation a few weeks ago.
Cake is made of Chiffon Pandan Coconut and gymnasts are made of fondant standing on KitKat chocolate bar.

 Prepare Chiffon cakes as usual.  I made double batch using my commercial mixer

 Here is another tip that I promised before.  Yes, Aluminum chiffon cake pan works best.  If you are using the non-stick dark chiffon cake mold to bake, be sure to turn the heat down from 325 to 310 or 300 to make sure that it is not over baked or shorten the baking time.

 After cooling, remove the cake out of the mold using sharp knife to gently separating the cake from the mold.   Try to slice down in single motion if you want to keep the nice brown crumbs intact all around the cake.

 Make Chocolate ganache.  Or make your favorite frosting.

 Prepare the center filling.  This one has sliced banana - sprinkled with "FruitFresh" ascorbic acid powder to keep banana from browning.  And covered with fresh whip cream.

 Lift up the top half of the cake when the ganache is all set/firm.

 Set the top cake.  *It was a bit challenging.   The cake of course would not slide off.  Maybe the trick would have been to cover the cake spatula with powder sugar?   I used a long frosting spatula to lift and slide it to top the bottom cake.   Luckily it transferred smoothly.

 Since the cake has to be transported up the hill from where I live to Placerville.  To avoid cake slide during the driving, I decided to insert  bamboo skewers to hold the cake in place.
Upon arrival at the location, I placed the KitKat chocolate bar and inserted the fondant gymnast figurines on top by sticking toothpick thru them.

Merry Christmas Egg Nog Biscuits

This Bud's Egg Nog Biscuits turned out deliciously fluffy and tasty, and I am glad that I was brave enough to have tried it.

 Anyway you look at it, they were light and fluffy.  Full of vanilla flavor.

Ingredients:
2 Cups AP Flour + 1/2 C more for counter
2 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp salt
6 TBsp of butter cold, cut into big chunks
1/3 C Bud's Egg Nog

Shift flour, baking powder, and salt together, including the extra 1/2 C more flour into a large bowl.   Set 1/2 Cup aside on the counter top.
Add cold butter chunks.  Using fingers and mash flour and butter chunks between fingers.  Leaving pea size butter here and there.  Add Bud's Egg Nog.   Mix.
Dump the sticky dough onto the counter.
Gently knead to form a very "soft" ball.
Roll it out - Let dough rest for 10 minutes.   
Preheat oven to 425'F.
Roll dough out to 1/2 inch thick.  And cut with biscuit cutter.
Place closely to each other if you like soft side biscuits.  Let them rest for 3 to 5 minutes.
Bake until golden on the top.
Serve with crispy bacon, etc, etc.
 

TAKOYAKI

TAKOYAKI is one of my favorite childhood snack after going to the bathhouse.   It's easy, and fun to make them.
Special Tools - TAKOYAKI Fry Pan/Griddle, frying "pick", and oil brush

Ingredients:
1 C flour
1 beaten egg
1 C water
pinch of salt

Vegetable oil 

Cut Octopus tentacles into 1 inch long strips -or chopped -  set aside.

Optional:  chopped vegetables  - cabbage, carrots, onions, chopped shrimps, etc.

Sprinkles:
Red pickled Ginger
Katsuo - Shaved Bonita  or Powder form
Green seaweed powder
TAKOYAKI sauce or TONKATSU (Thick Japanese Worcestershire sauce)

Mix flour and beaten egg a bit, then add 1/8 C of water.  Mix.  Then, add another 1/8 C of water.  Mix, then, add 1/4 C of water, MIX.  and repeat.    Until the batter is thin, but not watery, nor thick.

Heat the pre-seasoned TAKOYAKI fry pan/griddle.  If this is the first time ever using it, oil it well  with the dedicated oil brush.

Tester:   If this is the first time the TAKOYAKI griddle is being used - be aware of the Murphy's law.  The first batch will most likely get stuck to the grill.  Be ready to experiment and throw away the first batch or enjoy it just the same.

 This is my first tester - not filled all the way was a mistake.  It has been a long time since I made them last, so I forgot.  And since I added all the goodies in the, I enjoyed the flops, too

Add the batter full in each section of the TAKOYAKI fry pan.  Add ingredients to the center of each section.   Cook until the side of each section appear translucent.  Use the Pick to flip the ball over.  Tuck all the dough under.   Cook for 1:30 min to 2 min, depending on your stove's heat power.  Take one out and check for doneness.

 Serve with all the sprinkles.
Your flipping skills will improve after the tenth flip, and they will turn out just great.

Much better.

 

Polly's Sufganiyot - Hanukka Jelly Filled Donuts Adventure

Do you ever come across a recipe that haunts you?  the recipe that you want to master?  or wonder why it turns out this or that way, and you want to find the correct ingredient portions to make the food turn out perfectly?  You search and you ask and you listen, and you try... and here is a winner recipe I found for making Sufganiyot.   I've tried one that was listed in the Sunset magazine before.  I am not sure because I used my commercial mixer to knead the dough that added to the difference in the result or it is a result of right combination of ingredients, but the Sufganiyot turned out very good for me.  I acquired this recipe while doing the search for the PONCHIK recipe.  Yep, I already have a very good recipe from the mypersiankitchen.com blogger's site that I am keeping, but there got to be some other perfect PONCHIK recipes out there in the Internet, right?  This time, I used the different wordings in the search engine, I tried "International Ponchik" recipes.   Wow! what a difference an additional word made.  It gave me several links to the PONCHIK recipes.  Of all the ones I found, I still think the recipe from mypersiankitchen.com gave the best result, however.   Before I start trying each new Ponchik recipe found, I decided to try the recipe for the Sufganiyot.  I couldn't do it on the Thanksgiving Day, nor do I want to miss the excitement or wait another 700 years for the Thanksgivings Day and Hanukkah falling on the same day, I made it on the week after I returned from the holiday.  It turned out great.

It only took the commercial mixer to knead the dough to a perfect texture in 8 min.

 

 Use biscuit cutter to cut into disc shape.

Try a few different sizes.   Cover and rest for about 30 min.

 Heat vegetable oil to 385'F

 Don't forget to Wobble the dough in the frying oil with spoon to help expand.
40 sec each side.

 

Cool on rack.
Fill with Jelly and or sprinkle with powder sugar.

 Yum!!  great texture and taste.

This wonderful Sufganiyot's recipe was found at

http://leitesculinaria.com/60367/recipes-hanukkah-jelly-doughnuts-sufganiyot.html

Please stop by there to obtain the recipe.
Thanks.