FOOD FOR THOUGHT
You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.
Aristophanes

Crabby Tales

EXOTIC as it may sound to a city-slicker, catching crabs is a common pastime for riverside dwellers in the villages near Mangalore. At my aunt's house, located in a most idyllic setting beside a creek in Kemmannu (Udipi district of Karnataka), crabbing was almost like a summer holiday ritual.

Unlike angling, crabbing does not demand a mountain of patience or to be rooted to a spot. You secure the bait firmly to the bottom of a net trap along with a weight and simply fling it into the water when the tide is just coming in. Then you go about your work, checking now and then to see if any crabs have crawled in and begun feeding on the bait, which is usually fish heads or chicken waste left overnight to rot and stink to high heaven. That stink is exactly what entices these scavengers.

Are they already in the net? Oh great! You're a step closer to tucking into crab drowned in a fiery red curry for lunch...yummm...never mind that the scorching summer heat suggests you'd be better off eating something else that's cooling for the body.

And now, here's a helpful tip if you don't want to risk losing a free lunch. While you crane your neck to see if they've landed in the net or not, ensure that your shadow doesn't fall over the water, because crabs are clever and wary creatures. At the slightest hint of movement, even that of a faint shadow over the net, they'll scurry away and it will be a long while before they venture close to the net again.

But once the unsuspecting crabs are firmly entrenched into the net feasting away merrily on a banquet of rotting food, you skilfully haul it in by its string (which is usually tethered loosely to the nearest coconut tree or held under a weight, usually a stone). Be careful not to get a painful pinch with their deadly claws. My cousin would do one better. Cruel as it was, she would pin the crustacean down with her foot firmly on its shell and yank its claws off with her bare hands, (Ouch! That hurt...!), completely dismembering and disarming the poor creature. If only the crab knew it was going to land straight into someone's curry pot! Maybe crabs are not so clever after all.

Happy crabbing!

Meanwhile, during May huge sea crabs are available in our market, each weighing up to a kilo or more, with claws that might be mistaken for a pair of pincers from your toolbox. There's something else that's rather unusual about this variety of crab. Mother Nature has imprinted a cross right in the centre of its back as if to give it a cross to bear! And probably because the pattern so closely resembles a crucifix, it's not surprising to find the largest of the shells - wider than an average hand span - displayed like a prized trophy on the walls of many an old Catholic home in the villages near Mangalore.

Cleaning crab might look complicated but isn't really a daunting task. You lift the shell off its back, then remove the grey gills also called 'dead man's fingers', trim the rest of its limbs (with a pair of multi-purpose scissors) and then crack it vertically in half. Wash well. Most fishmongers will clean them for you. I get mine to also give the claws a good whack, hard enough to make them crack. This makes it easy to prise out the sweet, succulent flesh afterwards.

Hands-on is the best way to eat crab. Cutlery is of no use here.

The other day I picked up two kilos of blue crab (which amounted to only 8 or 9 crabs) that went into a curry, pictured above. Be content drooling over the pic...and don't get crabby because I'll post the recipe shortly.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
....pray what more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of ears of green sweet-corn boiled, with the addition of salt?”
Henry David Thoreau

Sweet Corn Tikkis

THOSE golden beads of sweet corn are so hard to resist. The other day I picked up a couple of packets from one of many vendors doing brisk business on Ibrahim Sahib Street to make these tikkis for tea. (Tikkis for tea. How's that for an alliteration?). The easy availability of fresh sweet corn kernels nowadays has saved me a lot of misery in the kitchen. Canned or frozen were options but one usually bought whole corn and shaved the kernels off the cobs with a sharp knife. Hard work.

I find whole corn, boiled in salted water and then rubbed nicely with a halved lime dipped in a red hot chilli-salt paste most irresistible, even though it keeps one's lips burning for a while afterwards. Roasted is even better! Recently I couldn't help but admire the ingenuity of a bhuttawala (seller of roasted corn) who had fashioned a thick brush with the leaves of the cob and then wielded it with a flourish to smear the lime-chilli-salt paste on to the corn. Creativity to the core!

What you need for 20 tikkis:
1 1/2 cups sweet corn kernels
3 cups mashed potato
4 slices of bread
2 green chillis, minced
2 medium sized onions, chopped fine
1 medium sized tomato, chopped fine
1 tablespoon ginger-garlic paste
A fistful of green coriander, chopped fine
1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
1/4 teaspoon saunf (fennel) powder
Salt to taste
Oil to fry

For the coating:
Make a thin batter (like the consistency of beaten egg) with two tablespoons of gram (chickpea) flour and 3-4 tablespoons of water.

To make the corn tikkis, first heat two tablespoons of oil in a pan and fry the onions till transparent.

Add the green chilli, ginger-garlic paste, turmeric and saunf powders and the green coriander. Fry a little, add the chopped tomato and cook on low heat till soft. Cool.

Put the corn kernels in a blender and run the blender for just about 5 to 10 seconds, till the corn is a coarse mash. Grinding it longer will give you a watery paste which will make it hard to form the tikkis. I made this mistake once. Moisten the slices of bread with a little water and crumble them. Now mix everything well together with the mashed potatoes. Check for salt and form into tikkis. Coat with the gram flour batter and shallow fry on medium heat till golden brown on either side.

PS: With (or without) a little bit of tomato sauce or mint chutney on the side, I can bet you this ain't any corny snack!

Christmas Cake Trifle

I THINK the best way to use up leftover Christmas cake (if there's any left over!) is to make a trifle with it. The one I made yesterday for a pot-luck lunch comprised mainly leftovers - three-quarters of a plum cake loaf, five slices of canned pineapple and the last orange from the fruit bowl.

With a wee bit of imagination, you can make this trifle with just about anything you have at hand. Only ensure that the flavours and textures sort of blend or complement each other. After the calorie overload of the past few weeks this trifle, far from being sinfully rich, was just right to tie up a light lunch at a friend's place. Or so I imagined.

All that needed to be made was a rum sauce to pour over and an apricot jelly to top it with, besides a sprinkling of some toasted and slivered almonds for a bit of nutty crunch. While
the usual custard sauce is rich and heavy with egg yolks and is patiently stirred over a double-boiler to avoid curdling, the one I made was basically a light white sauce, with sugar for sweetening and a few tablespoons of dark rum for flavour. Just light and nice.

What you need
for the rum sauce:

55 gms butter
55 gms flour
55 gms sugar
5 tablespoons dark rum
550 ml milk
A teeny weeny pinch of salt

Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat. Add the flour and stir around a bit with a wire whisk. Add the milk in a slow stream, and continue stirring with the whisk, because you want to get a smooth sauce, without lumps. Add the salt, sugar and the rum and continue cooking, stirring all the time till it comes to a slow boil. Turn off heat. Cover and set aside to cool before using.

To assemble the trifle:

Crumble the cake and press it lightly and evenly into the base of a glass dish. Sprinkle a little of the pineapple syrup from the can to moisten. Spread a layer of the pineapple bits and chopped orange segments. I would have loved to use a couple of oranges, but it was too much work to go out and get some...so I spooned a little Cointreau over the fruit layer to enhance the orange flavour.

Now pour the cooled rum sauce evenly over the fruit layer. Refrigerate for a couple of hours. Just before serving, spread a layer of apricot jelly (made in advance as per instructions on the packet). Lastly, sprinkle some toasted, slivered almonds and a little green tutti-frutti for colour contrast. Serves 6-8.

PS: I thought a few drops of liquor/liqueur would not do any harm, but did I hear someone say "My knees are feeling a bit wobbly"?

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
To extend your life by a year, take one less bite each meal.
Chinese proverb

Pina Colada Pudding

THIS delicious pudding was just the perfect dessert to round off our Christmas lunch. The original recipe was called Snowflakes which my dear friend Aruna had shared with me many years ago. Yellowing with age, the sheet of paper on which she had written it in blue ink (see pic below) still lies cello-taped inside my book of treasured recipes collected from here and there, each with its own story. Reference to it is like a flashback to our heady days of working together in the newsroom of a local daily - a place where I had forged some friendships for life. If the proof of the pudding indeed lies in the eating, then I think Aruna had once paid me the ultimate compliment when she said it had turned out better than her own! She says the credit for the recipe should actually go to her mother.

Snowflakes by itself is an instant hit with its lovely taste and texture. Not excessively sweet either. However, throwing in some canned pineapple bits and adding a splash of Malibu coconut rum gave it a kick, and also a new name. As usual, it was in the middle of making it that inspiration struck and both ingredients were readily at hand. So I went ahead with an assured feeling that one can never go wrong with a pineapple and coconut combination. Which, besides for making a sensuous pairing also conjures up images of tropical beaches, bikinis and umbrella drinks...

So here goes:

You will need:

2 cups whipped cream
1 and 1/3 cups fresh, grated coconut
5 slices canned pineapple, chopped
1 cup sugar
1 and 1/4 cups milk
1 tablespoon gelatine
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
3 tablespoons Malibu coconut rum
A pinch of salt
Half a cup of water

Mix sugar and milk on a slow fire, stirring until sugar has dissolved. Set aside to cool completely.

Heat half a cup of water and dissolve the gelatine in it. To the gelatine add the vanilla and salt and pour it into the milk/sugar mixture. Now add Malibu. Stir once to blend. Fold in the whipped cream, grated coconut and pineapple bits (reserving some for decoration) into the milk/sugar/gelatine mixture.

Gently ladle into a dish, cover with cling film and chill for at least three hours until set. I got it out of the way a day earlier. Garnish with pineapple bits and glace cherries.
Serves six.