Crabs

The kind you find in the sea, obviously. I know I've not written anything for ages, but I was on holiday, and I'm a very busy person. But through this I have come up with a seriously quick dinner, if it's not in one of Jamie Oliver's speed cooking books, it should be. But before that: sea food.

I love sea food, I love really nicely done fish, I like prawns, lobster and my favourite childhood sandwich filling was crab paste.

But I do have issues with cooking it. I'm so worried about ruining fish, or doing it badly so that it puts me off trying again. While on holiday my husband and I tried chowder, we both had the same and I thought it was lovely, but something in it upset my husbands stomach and from now I know he'll be reluctant to try it again.

The other issue I have with sea food is knowing what's ok to eat. I avoid Cod because it's decreasing in numbers, but I know that's only from one area and some is ok to eat. There are websites that can tell you what's good or not, but you can't really check this as you wander around the supermarket, although there is the Marine certified sustainable mark which is good to look out for. But what generally happens is I end up buying the same thing every week; battered pollock or occasionally basa (I love basa, but partly because there's no such thing, it's a PR name because no one wants to eat Vietnamese River Cobbler).

So, having found something sustainable and seasonal like crab, where the hell do you get it from, and what do you do with it? Well, catching crab is a fairly easy and cheap thing to do. This is me about 10 years ago crabbing off Padstow harbour wall in dire need of a shower. As it happens I didn't catch anything, but a couple of kids near us did. If you're really enthusiastic and live near the sea you can put out a pot, but I don't know much about them. Of course if you do actually catch something you have to kill it to eat it. As far as I'm aware there are two methods, the "stick it in cold water and slowly heat it up" way (which I don't think is as kind as advertised) and the "kill it quick by stabbing it" way described here.

There is of course another way, which is buying a crab. I was actually given mine, a nice dressed crab (all the gross bits like dead mans fingers, legs and lower carapace are removed). You can also buy the brown and white meat separately in a shop.

Anyway, having rambled on, Spicy crab linguine. Inspired by something I had on holiday last year but found so spicy I couldn't finish it. This takes as long as it takes the linguine takes to cook.

1 crab
1 chilli
2 cloves garlic
3 or 4 spring onions
3 or 4 tablespoons crème fraiche
spices like paprika, cayenne pepper and chilli flakes
enough linguine for two (I used my spaghetti measurer) 

• Put a sauce pan of water to boil (boiling it in the kettle first saves time waiting for it to heat up on the hob)
• Chuck in the linguine when the water is boiling, and put the spring onion, garlic and chilli on to fry.
• As the garlic colours add the brown crab meat. Fry for a minute or two and add the white meat.
• After another minute or two add the creme fraiche and what spices you want (mind the chilli flakes, they're spicier than you think).
• *Check the taste* If its a bit spicy you can add more creme fraiche, but best to add in small amounts because you can always add but it's difficult to take away.
• When pasta is cooked, drain it and add to crab mix. Give it a good stir and serve. It'll look about as appetising as the picture but tastes pretty good.

 So apart from obsessing about food, I've recently been knitting tiny things, some hats for the Innocent Big Knit (although I'm now sending them to Ireland so that's a post for a different day) and some mochimochi for a friends wedding. I made them for the fridge, they kindly put them on their wedding cake. 

I've also learnt my camera does some pretty good close ups, so maybe expect to see more pictures of bugs as you don't want to see them.