On Wednesday afternoon I was wandering through the market (no clinics, so it’s an afternoon off) and a new delicacy has appeared on one of the sellers stalls, neat little bundles of crabs, all trussed up in twine.
Between my broken Bislama and her broken English I was pretty confident they were edible, and just needed boiling, just like preparing fresh crabs at home. I gave the lady 200vatu and off I wandered with my neat parcel of new friends, they seemed pleased too, as they kept waving their legs at me.
As I walked back towards my accommodation I notice a lot of the locals looking at me with either incredulity, disbelief of just unbridled humour. Old ladies would look and smile, young girls would point and giggle, everyone else just stared!
I had a number of theories circulating in my head
1) These crabs were the worst tasting critters ever to walk the earth
2) They were a form of traditional medicine for impotence
3) Seeing a white fella carry a bale of mud crabs is just plain funny
I was hoping for the latter.
Luckily this day was one of the wettest so far, as cooking the crabs and picking out the meat took up the remainder of the afternoon. By the end of it, (with the assistance of my fellow student Laura) we had a small bowl of crab meat, a pretty poor reward for an afternoons work.
To bulk it up we decided to make crab cakes; here is my recipe.
Unidentified crab species crab cakes
Some crabs (6)
Some sweet potato (2)
Juice of half a lemon
Fresh ginger (about the size of your thumb)
Chilli samble (chilli sauce)
Mix, Mash, squeeze, shape, dust with plain flower. Fry. Serve with green beans. Crab cakes; done!
I can report they tasted fine and had no aphrodisiac qualities.
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