Last month, my husband and I went to Nara Prefecture to have yakuzen cuisine again at our favorite restaurant. This time, we enjoyed crabs called Shanghai gani in Japanese. These crabs are very popular but expensive in Japan. The best season for them is from November to December, so we were really looking forward to trying them.
When we entered the restaurant, the chef explained about the crabs before serving. Although he is from China, he speaks Japanese very well. Listening to his explanation was fascinating. He told us that male crabs and female crabs have distinctly different flavors, which made us even more curious to try them.
The first dish, shown in the picture below was the appetizer. We rapped the vegetables with the crepe looking crust and ate them. It tasted like Peking duck without the duck.
Next came shrimp shumai.
The picture below was the female Chinese mitten crabs. The chef had boiled them and served one to each of us.
Following the chef's instructions on how to eat them, I carefully worked my way through the crab. They were simply boiled but extremely tasty. I absolutely loved it.
The next picture shows male Chinese mitten crabs. Their scissors were much bigger than female ones, which meant there was more meat to enjoy.
I personally preferred the male crab than the female one because it tasted as if I was eating cream cheese even though my husband preferred the female one. He said he preferred harder meat. Although I'm not such a big fan of crabs like my husband, I absolutely became fan of these crabs. Since we were so busy cutting the parts and digging out the meat that we were very quiet.
The picture below was rice porridge, which is often eaten when people get sick. Rice porridge is one of the most popular dishes in yakuzen cuisine.
The final picture features a dessert: almond tofu on the far left and Chinese dumplings on the far right.
This course cuisine was the most expensive meal we had last year but it was also the best. I'm already looking forward to having these crabs again this year!
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Oh man, this looks so delicious. I love eating crab, but my wife and teenage boys aren't as good at getting the meat out of the shells, so I end up having to help them all the time. Because of that we don't have it very often :)
I totally understand the situation. I'm not good at doing that either, and my husband sometimes helps me out. I think if we want to improve something, we need practice, so your family should eat it a little bit more often!