Crabulous Crab

So...hairy crab season!  It occurs in September/October, but that's exactly why May is the perfect time to talk about it. During previous hairy crab seasons in Hong Kong, I mostly celebrated by thinking about how disgusting any food preceded by the word hairy sounded. This year (er, well, actually, October 2010), I just decided to go for it.

YIKES!

I guess the thing about these crabs is that they are VERY famous, and they pretty much only come from one or two lakes in China (in Suzhou, near Shanghai in Jiangsu province).  Their name comes from the terrifying-looking hair that covers their claws. Don't worry, though. You don't have to eat the hair. All you are looking to eat is the roe (eggs - the orange stuff in the above picture) and whatever crab meat you can get out of the crab with your tiny fork, shell cracker and various other tools which you could alternatively use to excavate an archaeological site filled with baby bird bones. You basically have to completely destroy the crab to find any meat.  Which would be fun, I guess, if you weren't starving.

But, I have to admit, it's pretty good.  I wouldn't deem it a delicacy, but then again, I consider a large cheese Domino's pizza a delicacy.  Below, some other weird-looking eggs that were actually maybe delicious.  Clearly, I've been here too long.