6 Things You Should Know About Eating a Crab Curry
1. A crab curry – given the per kilo price for crabs – is
one of the most expensive Durban-style curries to make. It’s also an intimate
dish that involves using your hands and mouth a lot, what with all the loud
biting and crunching of shells and the sloppy chiselling out of crab meat with
your thumb – i.e. it’s not exactly a first-date dish. So, if someone cooks this
curry for you or invites you over to share one, you can be sure that they
really like you and are super comfortable around you. You should probably marry
this person.
2. Eating a crab curry is, apart from working on an oil
rig, one of the messiest activities known to humankind. Crab juice and curry
squirts everywhere, into your eyes, onto the person sitting opposite you. It
dribbles down your chin, arms, and it stains your clothing. Crab curry stains
are harder to get out than an in-form Hashim Amla, so it’s strongly advised
that you purchase a special T-shirt, to be used only for eating crab curry. Of
course, you could also use a bib or napkin but those items are best left for
amateur crab curry eaters. After several years, your crab- eating T-shirt will
be a beautiful patchwork of built-up curry gravy stains, a sort of abstract
impressionist painting of poor table manners.
3. Warning: no matter how proud you are of your crab curry
T-shirt, never ever show it to visitors to your home. It is not, as this author
has sadly learnt, the conversation piece you think it is.
4. A perfect crab curry is brown-red in colour and its
gravy is thin yet deeply rich in flavour, both sour and spicy at the same time.
In fact, a good crab curry is so hot that it should cause your eyes to tear,
your nose to run, and your scalp to sweat. Tip: if your wife, husband, or
partner is emotionally distant, feed them crab curry every day and they will be
bawling their eyes out in no time. That’s right, crab curry could very well
save your relationship.
5. In terms of etiquette, it’s acceptable, and indeed
expected, to stick a crab leg into your mouth and to loudly suck out the
delicious, curried juices. However, it is not acceptable to blow into the crab
leg, pretending that it’s a saxophone and that you are John Coltrane.
6. After you have eaten a crab curry, its gravy will have,
crab T-shirt or not, left its mark and odour on your body. Thus, it is strongly
advised that you take two showers. The first shower should be taken in
conjunction with a powerful sheep dip as a disinfectant to get rid of any trace
of the curry. Once dried off with a towel, you should take a second shower to
rid yourself of the poisonous sheep dip which has now likely seeped into your
skin. A little sheep dip poisoning is par for the course when eating crab
curry, so ignore the retching and think fondly of your next crab feast.
Curry and Bread by Pravasan Pillay is available from Made in Durban, Clarke's bookshop in Cape Town, and select Exclusive Books branches in Gauteng and Durban.
