Last year (if you're curious about last year's meal, you can click here), my husband and I had Shanghai crabs by ourselves, but this year we invited our daughter and her family. The five of us went to Nara Prefecture to enjoy them. The crab season is in December, so it became our year-end-party.
When we first had them, we were so amazed by the taste. Unfortunately, compared to last year, the crab's size looked smaller. The Chinese chef explained the situation with this year's crabs.
We started with appetizer. It was our grandson's first time to have Shanghai crabs, so I was looking forward to seeing how he would react.
We wrapped a variety of vegetables topped with niku-miso in several sheets of rice paper and had them. They were delicious. I love their homemade niku-miso, and this year I made my own doubanjiang to make it. Mine is good, but theirs are much better. I have no idea how they make such tasty niku-miso.
Our grandson loved the shrimp shumai.
Crabs were ready to eat. The chef boiled them and served one to each of us. We started with the female crabs.
I'm not a huge fan of crabs, butt my family love them, so I get some opportunities to have them. Compared to other crabs, I like the Shanghai crabs the best. They taste very creamy. My grandson and I enjoyed sharing one together.
I don't drink alcohol, but the other three family members do, and they enjoyed Shaoxing wine. According to my son-in-law, he'd never tasted such a good one before. Since he knows alcohol well, it must be excellent.
While they were enjoying their drinks, the second crab were served. This time was males. It was even creamier.
After the crabs, we had another vegetables dish.
Then, we had rice porridge, which was very tasty too.
The last dishes were desserts.
Everything was so tasty that our daughter and son-in-law said that they want to join us again for the New Year's meal. We're planning on going back to Nara to enjoy their special meal again next year!
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title: (Our Crabby) New Year's Eve Dinner
Happy New Year! You ate so much crab that I'm surprised you all didn't walk out of the restaurant sideways! π Yumi, your English is very good but posts have been a little "factual". This year, I'd like to see you work on bringing a little levity and even humor into your posts, and I'll help you. All the best to you and your family.
Those crabs look delicious!
@CocoPop Thank you as always for the corrections. The meal isn't the new year's eve dinner because we have a tradition eating soba, but thank you for the suggestion. I'm sorry that my posts sound boring. I'm looking forward to your help. Thank you! We don't eat such amount of crabs, each people had two: one male and one female. The chef boiled everybody's crabs at the same time, so it looked many of them. Shanghai crabs are very small compared to other, so we didn't walk the way, lol.
@Ersatzjello You'll love the crabs! You should come back to Japan to try them!!
@yumiyumayume I hope I didn't give you the impression that I found your posts boring. Humor is so different from one language to another. My comment about walking sideways was just a joke. That's what I mean by levity. For instance, instead of just stating that the crabs were ready, saying something more enthusiastic like "It was finally crab time!" and little comments like that that bring some life into an otherwise factual account. You'll see what I mean in your next post π
@CocoPop Thank you for the comment. It's hard to read how people feel only from the texts. I know you're joking, and no worries. Thank you for the explanation. I'm looking forward to your help this year as well. Thank you so much!