In the twenty-four solar terms, today is light snow, the northeast wind in the vast areas of China began to become a regular visitor, the temperature gradually dropped to about 0 ° C, the first snow appeared in the area north of the Yellow River, and the long winter day began again. Not long ago, the city of Beijing ushered in the first snow of this winter, and the streets and alleys of Shanghai were also paved with French plane trees that had been knocked down by autumn rain.
In the late autumn and early winter, it is no longer the sorrow of the ancient poets who "if life is only as it is at first sight, what is the autumn wind and sorrow", and now people see more harvests and joys about this season.
Year after year, whether it is a southerner or a northerner, they will eat hairy crabs on the days when the autumn wind is rising, but due to the influence of natural factors, the hairy crabs that should be eaten in autumn are delayed this year, taking advantage of the snow festival, before the long winter station, holding a hairy crab in hand, enjoy the delicious taste of this season exclusively!
<b>Interesting numbers about hairy crabs</b>
The annual output of hairy crabs in Yangcheng Lake is about 2,000 tons.
The average water price of hairy crabs in Yangcheng Lake is: 3.0 two/45 yuan for male crabs and 2.0 two/45 yuan for female crabs, plus transportation costs, an authentic Yangcheng Lake hairy crab can be sold for at least 60 yuan.
Affected by floods and climate this year, the hairy crabs that come to the tables of citizens are not so "big", and the production in the main producing areas has dropped by 10% to 15%.
According to incomplete statistics, the Shanghai market can eat 50,000 tons of crabs a year.
Crab vending machines have been introduced in the halls of some stations of Suzhou Metro Line 1, and the price of each one ranges from 15 yuan to 30 yuan.
<b>About the correct steps to remove crabs for hairy crabs</b>
In the first step, cut off the crab legs from back to front with crab scissors.
In the second step, use a crab needle to push out the leg meat, put it in a crab bowl, and spoon some ginger vinegar to eat.
In the third step, the crab claw placed on the crab table is gently loosened with a crab hammer, and the crab shell is peeled off with a crab needle
Pick out the crab meat.
In the fourth step, use a crab hammer to gently tap the sides of the crab shell to loosen the shell.
In the fifth step, use a crab spatula to pick apart the shell that has been knocked loose.
In the sixth step, use a crab spoon to gather the white crab paste and you can eat it.
<b>A good wine pairing about crab eating</b>
Although crab eating can relieve hunger, but its nature is cold, can not eat more, to accompany some warm food to achieve diet balance. Park Hyatt Shanghai's "Ginger Bread" bartending is a ginger drink that warms the body, activates blood and dispels cold, paired with rum, and is a modern Western-style wine choice with crab dishes.
Ingredients to prepare:
Kim Rum Homemade Ginger Syrup Lemon Juice Egg White Sparkling Wine
Basic steps:
Mix golden rum, homemade ginger syrup, lemon juice and egg whites, add ice cubes, shake appropriately and strain into a glass, pour sparkling wine until 8 points full, sprinkle with ginger powder and garnish with dry ginger breadsticks.
<b>The "partisanship" about crab eating</b>
Whether it is southerners or northerners, they like to taste the crab in the season of crab eating, but this "tasting" method is bound to usher in a PK - we will temporarily call those who love to eat whole crabs and are willing to tear crabs by hand as "whole crab party", and people who are reluctant to eat crabs by themselves, but prefer all kinds of ready-made crab dishes and snacks are called "crab demolition party", regarding this "party PK", where are you standing?
The northwest wind is blowing, and the whole crab is coming
Thesis of gravity: "Hairy crabs, of course, eat the whole thing!" ”
△ Wang Bao and chrysanthemums on the crab shape, the crab delicious to the extreme (Photo: Lin Zhou)
Steaming first sees the value. After several shell changes, the Great General of the Claw was able to cultivate an iron skeleton and full of muscles, how could he live up to it? When the northwest wind blows, the cream and yellow accumulated in the hairy crab for several months are also the fattest. Pick up a crab, just look at the bottom of the belly, fat enough to exhale, almost to the top of the crab shell, this is a good crab with high appearance.
Whether it is the Yangcheng Lake hairy crab with "green back, white belly, golden claw, yellow hair", or the Taihu lake crab with the same quality but the crab shell is slightly hard, once the steamer is put on, one by one fades away, astaxanthin instantly erupts, turning into a red cheng cheng golden steamed hairy crab, which makes people look pleasing to the eye.
Drunken crabs are intoxicating. Crab is cold and is best paired with rice wine. I don't know which old ancestor came up with the trick of drunken crab, combining crab and wine, solving the big problem of eating crab first or drinking wine first, and also making the whole crab have another performance stage. A pot of drunken ingredients, mix all kinds of flavoring, peppercorns, fragrant leaves, star anise, cinnamon, these icing on the cake, one can not be less, not only add yellow wine, but also add white wine, a little more elaborate also have to add bad brine.
△ In addition to crab yellow and crab meat, crab paste is also a delicious taste that brings infinite surprises (Photo: Lin Zhou)
When I was a child, I couldn't eat crabs, and my parents used chopsticks to clip crab yellow to my mouth, and I didn't forget to fold all the crab feet and put them in a small bowl, so that I could nibble and play by myself. When the crab is fat, the live meat in the crab's feet must not be missed, take a section of the first bite off the joints of the two heads, and then suck hard, a whole crab leg will slide into the mouth. If you can't suck, use the tip of the crab leg to top it, or just use chopsticks to poke, and the worst thing is to use the front teeth to bite down along the crab leg a little bit, and you can still eat a lot of crab meat.
When they are older, the family will naturally teach that the yellow in the crab cover can be eaten, but the stomach must be removed, and maybe you can still see a Fahai monk. The remaining crabs, to peel off their gills, but also in the center of the cream, yellow, meat to find the "hexagon" - crab heart, said that this thing is too cold, need to be discarded. I don't think there are a few people who eat hexagons into their stomachs, and I haven't seen bad ones, but opening the crab to find hexagons is itself full of fun to find.
Hairy crabs from snacks to large, but also learned how to eat, how to play. Come to think of it, eating crab in Jiangnan has long been not only eating, it is not only a model of "not eating from time to time", but also full of the beauty of inheritance from generation to generation.
<b>Taste Recommendation: The delicious moment of "Whole Crab Party"</b>
Turn live crabs into mature crabs, steam them, or cook them well? On this somewhat controversial issue, there are actually different opinions. Wang Bao and the restaurant, which has a traditional flavor of Shanghai, chose the method of boiling crabs - the rope tied to the crab is made of special herbs, and when cooked, it is put into a bag containing more than a dozen ingredients to dispel the cold and remove the fish, so that the texture of the crab meat is more delicious and tender, and the crab shell can be cleaner.
Taste Restaurant: Wang Bao and The Restaurant
Taste address: No. 603 Fuzhou Road, Shanghai
Hanshe's drunken crab, steamed Taihu hairy crab soaked in homemade drunken brine for 24 hours, sauce and wine rhyme, crab powder embellished with exclusive ginger spinach, full of flavor, vegetable salad and whole crab leg meat, drizzled with Italian black truffle grape vinegar, sweet and sour.
Taste Restaurant: Hanshe Chinese Restaurant
Taste address: many branches across the country
The Qianjin Drunken Crab launched by 2,000 Gold uses 18 kinds of Chinese and Western spices to boil into a sauce, and adds 9 kinds of wines such as "yellow wine, rose wine, VSOP, brandy, etc. To marinate, the strong wine flavor is matched with various spices, and the fat crab yellow dances in the mouth with a sweet aftertaste. Taste Restaurant: Lady Bund
Taste address: Shanghai Zhongshan East 2nd Road No. 22, 4th floor
The steamed hairy crab produced by Chef Gao Xiaosheng of Puxiang Guihualou uses the high-grade "blue back, white belly, golden claw, yellow hair" Yangcheng Lake seasonal hairy crab as raw material, and the cream and yellow accumulated in the hairy crab for several months are sent into the mouth when it is the fattest, and the original crab flavor is infinitely restored.
Taste Restaurant: Osmanthus Building
Address: 1st Floor, Pujiang Building, Shangri-La Hotel, 33 Fucheng Road, Shanghai
<b>The autumn breeze is gentle, and the pattern is changed to eat crabs</b>
Thesis of the center of gravity: "Hairy crabs, of course, eat the dismantled ones!" ”
△Shanghai Park Hyatt Hotel's interior chef Li Weimin's creative crab powder with onion oil cake (Photo: Lin Zhou)
As a person who was born south of the Yangtze River but not on the East Coast, the memory of hairy crabs only begins when they grow up. In fact, as early as the school childhood, I have heard of the reputation of hairy crabs, the news said that the annual output of hairy crabs in Yangcheng Lake is about 2,000 tons, but the Shanghai market alone can eat 50,000 tons of crabs a year. At that time, the understanding of numbers could only rely on imagination, imagining that such a large number of hairy crabs should be able to pile up into a high mountain, and from then on, I could not help but sigh that the feelings of people in the Jiangnan region for hairy crabs were really unusual!
△ Wang Baohe signature dim sum crab shell yellow, enough shrimp and crab powder inverted (Photo: Lin Zhou)
The first time I ate authentic hairy crab was at a restaurant on Jiujiang Road. The days of being able to eat fresh hairy crabs are not very long, and everyone hopes to rush to the best time node to eat the best hairy crabs. Throughout the street, restaurants large and small have launched the signature dishes of hairy crabs, and there are many varieties. Most of the people in the restaurant are locals, each of them peeling it by themselves, and I was at a loss for the first time.
It seems that after this incident, when I heard the name of the hairy crab, I was full of repulsive cells, and then successfully restored the delicious taste of the crab, thanks to a crab shell yellow. This is a snack named because of the round yellow crab shell, in fact, it is a sesame small baked cake, but Shanghainese love crab shell yellow, sweet and salty, in the crab shell yellow meat filling, add shrimp and crab powder, so that crab shell yellow becomes a veritable crab shell yellow.
△Crab powder hand rod width handmade by the pastry chef of Park Hyatt Shanghai (Photo: Lin Zhou)
△ Crab powder tofu skin decorated with Boston lobster prawns (Photo: Lin Zhou)
In addition to the crab restaurants launched by the folk tradition, high-end five-star hotels have also begun to inherit the tradition and create more delicious food. Park Hyatt Shanghai's crab powder dry mixed hand rod lasagna is a combination of heritage and creativity. In the sense of inheritance, the restaurant chef personally uses a hand to hand the chewy lasagna, just the right strength, the proper cooking, and restores the strength of traditional pasta. Creatively, a sufficient amount of crab powder is added to the lasagna with a strong taste, and every bite is filled with crab powder surprises that appear from time to time.
In "Dream of the Red Chamber", through the "Chrysanthemum Poetry Society", Jia Baoyu, Lin Daiyu, and Xue Baochao successively gave poems, Jia Baoyu inscribed poems: "The autumn between the navels is cold and forgotten, and the fingers are stained with fishy washing and incense", Lin Daiyu then said "Chelation Nayu is double full, the shell is convex and red fat block incense", and Xue Baochao gives a sentence with emotional color: "The road ahead has no longitude and latitude, and the spring and autumn sky in Pili is black and yellow".
From ancient times to the present, crabs in the Chinese food culture plays a role in the inheritance, in the process of inheritance of development, diet structure and way also in line with the development of the times, about the way of crab eating, from the beginning of the simple dismantling of crabs, evolved into the orthodox eight major pieces, and then again simplified to three major pieces, and now in order to adapt to the faster and faster urban rhythm, we advocate a simple and high-quality way of eating, crab eating ways have become simpler, the variety is more abundant.
<b>Taste recommendation: "Crab Party" beloved</b>
This crab powder stone pot roasted quail eggs produced by Minghao can bring people a unique surprise from the table - in the boiling hot stone pot, there are 3 female hairy crab crabs, and the unique aroma of crab powder wafts out of the stone pot, taking advantage of the hot stone pot, hitting two fresh and tender quail eggs, the two beautiful ingredients meet together, it is delicious and unstoppable.
Taste Restaurant: Shanghai Minghao Jing'an Branch
Address: No. 66 North Shaanxi Road, Shanghai (Junction of Middle Yan'an Road)
Hibiscus crab powder has a very "Jiangnan" name, and in terms of cooking techniques, it is also a famous Huaiyang dish that tests the master's skills. The stir-fried crab powder retains the crab powder sweet but fragrant and creamy, the protein is slippery and light, showing a semi-solidified and semi-flowing state, and every bite allows a sufficient amount of crab powder to wrap the entire mouth, and the slippery protein is light into the abdomen.
Address: 1st Floor, Pujiang Building, Shangri-La Hotel, 33 Fucheng Road, Shanghai
"Such as drinking Qiong cream" must be the most beautiful feeling of eating hairy crabs, this crab powder simmered bird's nest, on the taste of the fresh crab yellow, with a smooth and tender texture of bird's nest. In terms of taste, the combination of fresh crab yellow and light bird's nest adds a bit of layering to the taste of crab, which is "one white and one gold", which also makes the picture of golden autumn appear in front of you.
Taste Restaurant: Andaz Haipai Chinese Restaurant
Address: Shanghai Xintiandi Andaz Hotel, No. 88 Songshan Road, Shanghai, on the 1st floor
Wang Bao and the crab powder wontons add the filling to the crab powder, cook it into the bowl, faintly see the white and red meat filling, plus the turquoise green onion, tender yellow egg skin silk, so that people have a sense of time mistake, classic reproduction.
Crab powder cage is probably one of the most classic crab snacks, even if it is not the season when hairy crabs are abundant, it will always maintain its high popularity. Crab powder cage has precious crab powder inside, the cage is filled with pure clear water hairy crab and quality pork, and the skin jelly is boiled with pork skin and old hen, so the filling is particularly fresh.
This crab meat pumpkin soup produced by Hanshe is accompanied by crab powder toast, mixed with the fresh sweetness of crab meat with a rich cream pumpkin soup, and the roasted crisp toast is drizzled with fat crab yellow, and the taste buds are like crossing the ocean, borderless thick "crab meaning".
Photo: Lin Zhu Written by: cookie, sj