5.106 Spicy Taiwanese Crab Stir-Fry

Cycle 5 – Item 106

21 (Mon) April 2014

Spicy Taiwanese Crab Stir-Fry

3.5

at Caian

-Seongsu, Seongdong, Seoul, Republic of Korea-

with DJ + IZ, Mom + Dad

Home Visit 4: Break + Housekeeping (Day 6)

Day 1 (5.101 Chicken Inasal with Garlic Rice)
Day 2 (5.102 Potato & Corn Croquettes)
Day 3 (5.103 Mul Naeng Myeon x 2)
Day 4 (5.104 Donggeurang-Ddaeng)
Day 5 (5.105 Haemul Jjim)
Day 6 (5.106 Spicy Taiwanese Crab Stir-Fry)
Day 7 (5.107 Fusilli in Meat Sauce)
Day 8 (5.108 Grilled Seabass)
Day 9 (5.109 MIL’s Typical Korean At-Home Meal)

Concluding my initial 3-month contract with WHO, now extended 5.5 months, I’m back in Korea to take a break (contract break and personal break) and attend to various housekeeping matters – mostly for the (personal) break.

Caian is a Chinese restaurant. Located a block from my father’s office. In addition to classic Korean-Chinese fare, the menu offers a section of somewhat more progressive dishes that include ingredients unusual in the Korean-Chinese tradition, such as eggplant, green beans, crab, even hot & sour soup.

My father owns a company that deals with American books. Founded 1985, the company boasts an inventory and distribution/retail network that dwarfs all other book importers in the country combined.

Very unusual are the low prices, most well under 20,000 won, in contrast to the typical 30,000+ won for the classics.

For the first time in a long while, I took the kids for a visit. Free books for all (cookbooks for me).

The food was pretty good. The highlight was the Spicy Taiwanese Crab Stir-Fry: blue crabs -maybe two? -chopped into pieces, deep-fried, tossed with garlic and aromatics plus some kind of soy-chili dry dressing. Surprisingly, despite the shells, the pieces were perfectly edible, nice and crispy. Judging by the relatively small size of the crabs, I’d guess that they were young, perhaps harvested before the shells had turned fully hard. The dressing was interesting, salty and spicy, but unique in my experience, perhaps based on some sauce from Taiwan–in a few days, I’m going to Taiwan, so maybe I’ll get a chance to verify. Nothing else particularly stood out, but we all enjoyed the meal.