Time for a peek into the world of Chinese cuisine. One restaurant is bringing traditional Canton-style crab dishes to Taiwan, to shake up the palettes of Taiwanese gourmands. But these are crabs with butter, scallion oil, and even caul fat – not your ordinary crab at all.
A plate of crab-meat risotto is garnished with caul fat, which, in a hot oven, melts into the whole dish, giving the crab paste an old-days flavor that’s as rich as it is chewy.
Long grain glutinous rice is soaked for three hours before being cooked. On top, a layer of bright orange crab covering almost the whole steamer basket.
Then it’s scallop strips, and finally a covering of caul fat, the traditional topping for shrimp rolls. Now the crab is well bundled up and ready to be steamed.
The melting caul fat drips onto the crab. The chef still has to heat some more oil to bring out the aromas from scallops and scallions.
Wu Hai-ming
Chinese restaurant chef
Crab has a fresh flavor, anyway, but it doesn’t have much aroma. So in here we use aromatic ingredients. I’m thinking of the caul fat – we reduce the oil level underneath, so when the caul fat melts, it goes onto the crab meat and then mingles with the rice.
And crabs can even be cooked in butter, which sinks into the crab meat for a textured and rich flavor.
Big slabs of butter and scallion oil are fried, then the crab is added. The chef patiently keeps it on a low heat so the butter doesn’t brown.
Wu Hai-ming
Chinese restaurant chef
It’s cooked slowly, so the oil can gradually seep from the shell into the body of the crab, making it get grainier.
Crab with caul fat, crab in butter, and crab in classic Canton style… for seafood lovers, this is definitely a spot for the bucket list.