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- Cuisine: Modern Asian
- Serves 6
Featured as part of our Cooks and their Books series, this recipe comes courtesy of Teage-Ezard, award-winning chef and restauranteur.
More Teage Ezard recipes
Ingredients
6 soft-shell crabs
750 ml (1½ pints) vegetable oil
12 cloves garlic
4 tablespoons fresh green peppercorns
3 long red chillies
3 long green chillies
175 g (5½ oz) rice flour
1 quantity Tempura Batter
2 red bird’s eye chillies, seeded and finely chopped
½ tablespoon sea salt
4 spring onions (white end only), finely sliced
Preparation
Soft-shell crabs – crabs that have recently shed their shells and are protected by only a very thin skin – are eaten whole. They are about the size of the palm of your hand and need to handled very gently. They are generally sold frozen. I ate them in Thailand and was so impressed that I always go back to that same beach restaurant where they were served. In this dish the tempura becomes crisp, enclosing the beautiful sweet fl avour of the crab within. Accompany this with some watercress, mint leaves and wedges of lemon.
If the crabs are frozen, place them on a wire rack set above a large dish and leave them in the refrigerator to drain overnight. They need to be dry before being fried.
Heat the vegetable oil in a wok to 180°C (350°F). Pound the garlic and peppercorns to a fi ne paste using a mortar and pestle and fry the paste in the oil until crisp and fragrant. It will fl oat on the surface and can be removed with a slotted spoon. Drain on paper towel.
Fry the whole red and green chillies until their skins begin to blister (3–4 minutes). Drain on paper towel.
Carefully coat the crabs in rice fl our, shaking off any excess. Dip the crabs in tempura batter and then fry them in batches until crisp (3–4 minutes). Drain on paper towel then cut them in half.
Combine the fried paste with the chopped chillies, salt and spring onions. Add the whole fried chillies and crab halves and toss to combine. Serve immediately.
Recipe from Lotus: Asian Flavours by Teage Ezard with photographs by Greg Elms. Published by Hardie Grant Books.
If you enjoyed this Tempura soft-shell crab with fried chillies recipe then browse more Modern Australian recipes, Modern Asian recipes, appetiser recipes, seafood recipes and our most popular hainanese chicken rice recipe.
Modern Asian Restaurants
Displaying 10 of 376 Modern Asian Restaurants.
| Restaurant | Book Online | Suburb | |
| 1. | Harry's Singapore Chilli Crab | Sydney | |
| 2. | The Chairman and Yip | City | |
| 3. | Timmy's Kitchen | Manuka | |
| 4. | Taste of Asia | North Hobart | |
| 5. | Viet Hoa | Perth | |
| 6. | Petaluma's Bridgewater Mill | Bridgewater | |
| 7. | House of Chow | Adelaide | |
| 8. | Imperial Peking | St Peters | |
| 9. | Indochina Thai Restaurant | Unley | |
| 10. | Phuket | Glenelg |
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