Black Pepper Crab

Sorry G. that this took so long to be posted. But here it is now. To tell you the truth, I have never cooked black pepper crab before (but I still have the recipe). My mom and I always cook chilli crab.

Ingredients

• 3 - 4 crabs, washed
• 4 tbs freshly ground black pepper
• 3 - 4 fresh red chilli, seeded, minced
• 4 tbs butter
• 10 cloves garlic, peeled, minced
• 10 slices ginger 
• 2 tbs oyster sauce
• 2 tsp dark soy sauce
• 2 tsp sugar (optional)
• Coriander leaves for garnish

Method

1. Chop off the 2 clippers of the crab, separate the body of crab from its top shell, chop the body part into half.
2. Dry-fry black pepper in frying pan till fragrant.
   
3. Remove and set it aside.
   
4. Heat the wok/ whatever that can hold the crabs & the sauce, add butter.
5. When it melts, add garlic, ginger and chilli, stir-fry until its fragrant, about 3 - 4 minutes.
6. Add oyster sauce, soy sauce and sugar (if using), stir well.
7. Add the crabs and stir to cover the crabs with the sauce, stir-fry for about 5 minutes.
8. Add the dry-fried black pepper and stir-fry on high heat for a few more minutes.
9. Serve with the garnish.

P.S. Each slice of ginger is about 3 mm thick.

P.S. Dry-frying is frying without any oil.

P.S. It depends on how big your crab is, if its big, you need to cook it longer.

Kitchen From Hell

It has been more than a month since I blogged. I have been extremely busy (and a bit lazy too) with school. Its really hell! Let me start with my typical day: I will wake up at 6:00 am, have breakfast and shower and leave my house latest by 6:55 am. We need to be there by 7:50 am for the roll call in full chef uniform. After that we will go into the culinary theatre for a demo & explanation of what we will be doing that day. And immediately after that, we will proceed down to the kitchen to cook. We will be marked on the dishes we produce each and every day (so we have to be on our top every single day). 

After the cookery, we will have a 45 minutes break and start the lecture/ knife skills. All these will end only at 4:00 pm or 5:00 pm (depends on how fast we work). To add on, we still have lessons on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm. After that, when I get home and shower, it will be almost 7:00 pm already. Have dinner till like 7:30 pm and need to print the recipes for the next day and read them well. By the time I am done with that, it will be at least 8:30 pm or 9 pm already. And not forgetting that I will need to iron my chef uniform for the next day. After that, I will need to get ready for bed because of the early next day. And it goes all over again. 

Not forgetting that we still have homework, which is to cut up carrots into different sizes and that will take at least 30 minutes. So, to conclude, I really do not have much time for anything else. Well, thats the life of a chef-in-training. What to do..... except to live through it (hopefully).