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November 13, 2014

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Home » City specials » Hangzhou

Crab the easy way and a menu full of goat

By Xu Wenwen | November 13, 2014, Thursday | Print Edition

FROM the water to the land delicacies can be found all over this planet. In Hangzhou, ugly little hairy crabs are plucked from nearby lakes and eaten with a passion by locals. Meanwhile goat meat is eaten by some to keep the body warm as the weather turns colder.

Shanghai Daily introduces an upscale resort with great hairy crab dishes in its restaurants and a rustic village famous for its goat cuisine.

Forget all the cracking

As Chinese gather to crack open and dig into hairy crabs, Westerners may feel as though the little crustaceans are too much work for such little meat.

Amanfayun Resort offers crab dishes for those who want to enjoy the seasonal delicacy but are reluctant to get their hands messy. The crab meat is used in salads, pastas, soups and ravioli.

Almost every part of the crab is used. The white, tender, fibrous meat as well as the golden roe are added to a salad or wrapped in al-dente ravioli. The broth is simmered with crab roe and goes with the ravioli.

Crab is also served with angel-hair pasta. The chef stuffs crab roe and minced crab meat into the shell so diners can remove it easily and mix with the pasta.

The Steam House, the resort’s Chinese restaurant, also provides a hairy crab dish that is easy to eat. The dish, named Lotus Crab, is actually crab with fried egg, a southern Chinese dish. The cook sautes crab roe and then adds egg white and fries them together. The concoction is eaten with a spoon.

The menu is available only this month.

 

Address: No. 22, Fayun Lane

Tel: (0571) 8732-9999 ext 734

 

Toss a goat into a big pot

Another autumn and winter specialty for Chinese people is goat since it warms the body and according to traditional Chinese medicine is especially good for men.

While eating a crab requires technique, eating goat is more of a preference since not everyone enjoys the strong smell.

For those brave enough to try, the annual Goat Pot Festival in Cangqian Town, Hangzhou, has just started.

The festival is aptly named as a huge iron pot is used to boil an entire goat, a traditional recipe in Cangqian.

The recipe goes back hundreds of years, when many people in the town butchered goats and sold the meat.

After selling the meat, villagers didn’t want to waste the head, feat and stomach. The dilemma was solved by turning them into dinner.

The skull, tail and viscera are cleaned and thrown into a large pot with simple seasonings and placed over a wood fire. The result would be a feast for at least 10 people. As time passed, “drawing from the goat pot” was no longer necessary, but it’s a tradition locals enjoy, a famous Cangqian specialty and a culinary adventure for tourists.

All restaurants in town have settled on a unified price list for this year’s Goat Pot Festival. It costs 660 yuan (US$107) for a meal for six to 10 people, 480 yuan for three to six people and 280 yuan for one to three people.

Restaurants in town also serve other goat meat and organ dishes.

One dish features boiled goat meat with the skin. It’s served without any soup and it doesn’t look too appetizing, but tastes surprisingly good. It’s simmered for hours so the skin is soft and the meat is extremely tender with a slightly salty taste.

Goat entrails are also cooked in a small hot pot set above a small oven on the table. Almost all kinds of entrails can be found in the pot, but the main ingredient is the blood curd. Another dish that doesn’t sound good but is rather yummy.

 

How to get there:

Drive on Wenyi Road W. to Luding Road, then turn left and drive for about 20 minutes until you see the town with a large goat head at its gate.

Hangzhou


 

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