How to Clean Crabs: Or the Finer Points of First Aid with Seafood
I watch crawfish skitter around my kitchen sink, clamorous and clawing. The spectre of my father hovers, whispering the steps to crustacean preparation.
Step 1: Purchase the freshest live crabs from your seafood market or fishmonger. Freshness is directly proportional to nippiness.
Step 2: Empty crabs into the deep trough of your kitchen sink. Maintain a wary distance as crabs scramble atop each other, clawing at eye stalks, snapping at pincers.
Step 3: Grip a large cleaver in your right hand, steel your courage, and grab a crab firmly to summarily do away with it.
Step 4: Call your youngest daughter to attend the resultant wounds on every finger of your left hand from an irritated crab, not yet ready to shuffle off this mortal coil.
Step 5: Do not be deterred! Grasp the cleaver now firmly in your bandaged left hand, and boldly grab another crab. The first crab was an aberration, the second will be easier.
the author's parents
Step 6: Call your youngest daughter again to attend the wounds, now on your right hand, from the second irritated crab, unwilling to volunteer as tribute.
Step 7: Stare forlornly at victorious crabs dancing their glee in the kitchen sink.
Step 8: Ring oldest daughter, with bandaged phalanges and a rotary dial phone. Plead plaintively for daughter to clean crabs.
Step 9: Cook cleaned crabs, savouring the rising bouquets of aromatics and tomato. When the crabs metamorphose from uncooked blueness to the ripe vibrant red that mirrors the sauce, remove them from the heat. Note with satisfaction that your foe has been deliciously defeated.
Step 10: Serve with plain rice, and sprinkle with abashed humility. Bandaged fingers are optional, but do reflect the determination required for success.