When I said to Rob that I really wanted to get the kids to have some crab, we both agreed that it would be a nice meal to have with them. Perfect for this time of year when it's warm and you are thinking about beach holidays. In my mind, we needed to go to a fishmongers and there would be a ready prepared crab, like you would get at the coast, meat already sorted and placed back in the shell for presentation. You have all seen it like that right? No fuss, just a case of enjoying it on some brown bread straight out the shell. Well, obviously Lincoln not being so close to the coast, this was a difficult thing to get, or maybe, my easy meal plan was actually not that easy. We ended up buying two frozen crabs from the fishmongers at Tesco which we would have to prepare ourselves.
I just want to say, Rob and I were naive! Haha! Hilariously we had confidence that in the end was truly tested!!
The plan was for Rob to cook up some of his homemade sweet potato and just potato chips. These are delicious and are actually part boiled before they are deep fried. We don't have a deep fat fryer but just do small batches in a wok. Sweet potato is really delicious; if you haven't had it, it is worth a go!
I was given crab duties. Which was fine but in the end it was very much a team method. Now this is something I would NEVER deal with. Firstly the thought of fish and body bits, makes my skin crawl but I seriously pepped myself up for it and even just holding it out of the packaging was a real achievement for me! This whole process really took its toll but by the end I was so proud of myself for sorting it!
We bought the crab on the day we wanted to prepare it, usually you should defrost a crab in a fridge overnight, but you can and place them in a sink full of cold water it takes an hour for a quick defrost.
We had two crabs, the first we went at it like we knew what we were doing. It quickly transpired we had no idea! It was YouTube that saved us, there are so many videos showing what to do, all the same method so we just went with them.
I think out biggest fear was the fact that we just didn't know what was good and what was bad. The white meat (which is the luxury part) is quite clearly white meat so once we figured that out, we were able to get all the good stuff. That was slightly fiddly but possible to do. What is classed as the brown meat (which you can eat) was not so clear, we weren't sure so we didn't really do anything with it.
But we had the white meat and that was all we needed to give us a taste, to say we had crab and to hopefully have enough for dinner!
With fresh salad, the chips and a bit of bread and butter we had our fish meal.
The kids, were not too keen. It was a shame, I thought they might enjoy the idea of crab but maybe it put them off. They tried it though and to me, that is all that matters, everything needs to be tried.
I liked it. It was hard to enjoy though as there was a worry of, what if we haven't prepared it properly in the back of my mind. But, that said, it was tasty and everything about it looked, smelled and tasted fine. We ate it all which must have been a good sign.
I really wanted to share this with you to encourage eating and cooking out of your comfort zone. It is really important to try as much as possible and there are so many ways you can find help and advice Youtube is great for that and even talking to good fishmongers will give information on what you to do.
Emily
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