Crabby birthday

Happy Birthday to all the Cancerians out there. What better way to celebrate late June/early July birthdays than with a giant pile of egg noodles and loads of fresh mud crabs in a ginger and shallot sauce.

Ginger and shallot mud crab with e-fu noodles from Golden Unicorn Restaurant, Maroubra Road, Maroubra

The leg parts of the crab with part of the body attached are lots of work, but with the yummy sauce all over the shell, it's not too much of a chore crunching through it to suck out the white flesh. My strategy is to hold the crab in my left hand and chopsticks in my right so I can get noodles when I've momentarily tired of trying to get at the crab. Chopsticks also come in handy for poking and scraping flesh out from the shell.

More crabbiness

But the claws are your real reward: already cracked for your convenience, picking away the shell bits reveals a large jewel piece of crab. I always fear that someone will steal it from me once I've peeled the claw so I usually don't waste much time admiring it. The flesh this time is sea-sweet and juicy, the little strands of flesh showing no resistance to my consumption. A mouthful of mud crab claw is just heaven.

I dream of mud crab claws...

The crab was particularly well done at Golden Unicorn while some of the subsequent dishes were a bit hit and miss. But the Cancerian wanted crab for her birthday, and crab I had.