It's Crayfish season!

Feeling a bit adventurous today, we walked by the aisles in Auchan supermarket this afternoon and passed by a bucketload of chinese crayfish on the fish section - apparently in season now. I have never cooked them before but their appearance is quite intriguing, surely challenging to cook. I wondered if the green curry sauce which I had in Auckland served with green lipped mussels can do. I decided to buy a handful to try. Upon a closer look, I noticed that these things didn't swim in water, instead they sort of walked on one another's back, had really really dark shells with tiny scorpion-like claws. Eeeekks!!! That put me off for a moment.....

All the 15 crawlers arrived safely at home. Mike helped to clean their guts simply by pulling their middle tail off - alive. Oef! Please, enough of this 'cruelty' - just dump them in the boiling water, will ya? After 5 minutes of steaming they looked almost edible enough ......

Freshly steamed chinese crayfish

Jiangsu province, where we live now, is quite famous for crayfish - which are also known as 'mini lobster' because of they're only as big as a thumb, with 3/4 of its length is the head. When in season, all local restaurants served them as a special offer - we just had the Hairy Crab season in last winter. Locals usually cooked them in light chili curry sauce.

It turned out that the green curry of our choice was a perfect one. I added a dash of coconut milk for the taste and sprinkled thinly sliced kaffir lime leaves. It tasted and smelled beautiful.

View Recipe Here

Leisure walk on one Saturday morning

We both woke up a bit late today, really late round 11am. Clear day but still too cold to get out and do stuff. Yeah, like there're anything to do here anyway. I wasn't in the mood for preparing breakfast, so we'd just pop by the hotel for a quick lunch.

The weather was crisp cold but still slightly bearable to go for a short walk. I sort of excited to try out the new camera. And there're quite a few photo ops on the way - like this funny looking curly cabbage-look-alike that had been planted since the beginning of winter. Not edible apparently, just part for decorative purpose in the parks. I think they look amazing this morning, especially with last night's drizzle, all dotted beautifully in strands of pearl-like morning dews. They look amazing! Anyone knows what it's called, pls let me know.

We took the back alley of the hotel which is a local residency area. Farmers mostly, have massive vegetable plantation in front of their houses. These people really know what they're doing, the vegetables look absolutely delicious!

And so the world disappears....

Woke up this morning to find the world had vanished. The fog was so thick, we could barely see anything out there. Still freezing cold, below 5 degrees C. Should be getting a bit warmer later today, but still won’t make me want to go out and do stuff. Gotta get up to get brekkie ready for B. See ya later!!