To celebrate Valentine’s Day this year, Mr. Taste decided he would make me Singapore Chilli Crab for dinner.

There’s nothing that says ‘I love you’ better than seeing Mr. Taste wrestling a 1.2 kilo crab around the kitchen, trying to find a way for it to die a relatively painless death.

My mum used to cook crab quite often when I was growing up – only I would leave the room every time she did the ‘deed’. This was convenient at the time of course, except now, we had to resort to Google to find out the best method for killing crab. Some prefer to stab a chopstick through its eyes, others throw it in a pot of boiling water and some prefer to put it in the freezer before attempting the above to put the crab in deep sleep.

Once the crab was numb from the freezer, Mr. Taste yanked open the shell and chopped it up into sizable portions.

We then fired up the wok and methodically followed a recipe from Ginger & Spice’s head chef Alex Lee. We had seen the recipe on a very enjoyable episode of SBS’ Food Safari.

Singapore Chilli Crab

Ingredients

Mud crab, well washed and chopped into sections
2 brown onions, peeled and roughly chopped
8 red chillies
Belacan, thumb size piece
½ tbsp vinegar
6 tbsp oil
1 tbsp tomato paste
400ml tomato puree
2 tbsp tomato sauce
4 tbsp light soy sauce
½ tsp salt
4 tbsp sugar
Water
1 egg
Coriander leaves, to garnish

Method

1. Blend onions and chillies in a food processor for 30 seconds.

2. Heat oil in a wok and add onion and chilli paste.

3. Add belacan and continue to cook until most of the liquid from the onions evaporates.

4. Add vinegar, tomato puree, tomato paste, sugar and salt.

5. Add tomato sauce, starch and light soy sauce.

6. Add crab pieces and continue to cook over high heat until shell turns red.

7. Add egg and stir through gently. Add water if the sauce is too thick.

8. Plate and garnish with fresh coriander leaves.