Corn and Crab Soup Recipe

This crab soup , simply called súp cua in Vietnamese, was my attempt to finish the leftover crab from last night's dinner. We bought six crabs for the two people who actually eat seafood in our house, so there was a fair amount unfinished. I prepared cua rang me (Vietnamese tamarind crab) and that's basically all we ate with a little salad on the side. We were so full by the end of the meal that we could not finish the dish. It was our Mount Everest and we didn't conquer it!  

I didn't want to waste the delicious crab, so I cracked the rest and gathered the crab meat. I had chicken stock in the freezer and I thickened it with a little corn starch. I added frozen corn and green onions to the soup and the result was just as I expected: mildly sweet, velvety and wonderfully soothing. Simply perfect!

Fermented Black Bean Crab Recipe

We had a giant seafood feast last weekend, and believe it or not, we cooked 12 whole crabs. The main flavoring of this dish was fermented black beans, which are very common in Asian cooking. I also added fresh green chiles and a lot of Thai basil leaves. 

The crabs are prepared in two steps. First, they're fried, and then to finish them off, they are stir-fried with the fermented bean sauce and a bit of cooking wine. It gets a bit messy around the stove, but the result is worth the effort!