Chilli crab is a popular dish preparation for crab . This hot and spicy chili crab are considered as Padangnese or Minangkabau descent style for it’s kick’in spicy and hot taste. Just like BEEF RENDANG, the chilli crab spice paste contains a dominant chilli flavour. Mud crabs are commonly used and are stir-fried in a semi-thick, creamy, hot and savoury tomato and chilli based sauce. Padangnese chilli crab are slightly different with the relatives, a Singapore style chilli crab. Despite its name ‘chilli’, Singapore style chilli crab is not a very hot and spicy dish. The other difference is the Padangnese style chilli not contain shrimp paste but turmeric, candle nuts and chilli paste.
Kepiting Saus Padang or Padangnese Style Chilli Crab is a very popular dish among seafood restaurant through out Indonesia, especially chinese restaurant. The chef usually boiled the crab with ginger and lemongrass or deep fried it before tossed with the spicy sauce. Don’t you ever espect to order kepiting saus padang in a Padangnese Restaurant since it’s won’t be available. To make it even more fragrant, i love to add some curry powder to the dish. A little touch of thick coconut milk added to make a creamy sauce. Instead serving with a deep fried mantau or buns, the Kepiting Saus Padang is served with steamed rice.
This Indonesia chilli crab got a little of my personal twist. I use a sliced tomato and green chillies to make it refreshing even more. Beside tomato puree, i use a ripe torch gingger pods that called as buah cekala, kecombrang, kincuang or sambuang in Minangkabau or Padangnese descent language. You should crack open the torch ginger pod and mashed the black seed innard with water, then strain it through a fine sieve. The torch ginger pods and flower are essential ingredients to to make a Arsik Ikan or Indonesian (Batakness) Spiced Fish with Torch Ginger and Szechuan Peppercorn.
I was so damn lucky to had the blue crab or flower crab since this is the last stock in the market this weeks. I like this crab for it sweet and succulent meat eversince i made Seafood Paella and Steamed Blue Crab in Green Chillies. This crab is worth for the price since literrary i had to struggling around a bunch of jolly mommy with the same interest to purchasing the flower crab. This blue crab is the biggest i ever seen, about 2-3 for a kilo and it’s very cheep too. I purchased 3 blue or flower crab weighted around 1,4 kilos for about 6 USD.
Ingredients:
Chilli Crab Recipe :
- 2@500 gr crab, cleaned, remove the gills
- 1 large tomatoes, deseeded, roughly chopped
- 1 large tomatoes, pureed
- 3 green chillies, crosswisely slice
- 1/4 cup coconut milk
- 1/4 cup tomato ketchup
- 4 tbsp hot chilli sauce
- salt and pepper to taste
- 2 kaffir lime leaves
- 6 torch ginger pod or buah asam cekala, cracked, dissolve with water and strained
- 1 tsp curry powder
- 3 tbsp oil
Chilli Crab Spice Paste :
- 6 red cayenne pepper or chillies
- 6 bird eye chillies (or more for more hot taste)
- 8 shallots
- 6 cloves garlic
- 3 cm turmeric, grilled, peeled
- 4 candle nuts, toasted
Instruction :
How to Make Chilli Crab:
- Season the crab with salt and lime juice, deep fried for two minutes with large flame ( i prefer not doing this for a less calories)
- In a large skillet , heat up the oil over medium-high heat. Saute the spice paste until the oil separated int he edge of the skillet.
- Add the green chillies, tomato puree, kaffir lime leaves, curry powder, coconut milk, tomato ketchup, and chilli sauce.
- Add the crabs and the torch ginger infused water , bring to boil in a large flame.
- Adjust the taste with salt and pepper
- Just before finished cooking, add the chopped tomato
- Serve with hot steamed rice.