The World Table

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Trinidadian · Main

Curry Crab and Dumpling

  • Advanced
  • 50 min
  • roughly 4 of 4 for cost

fiery · rich · bright · aromatic Leads with real fire that builds and stays, richness that coats and comforts, opening aromatic and staying there.

Ingredients

  • 4 blue crabs, about 1.4kg, cleaned and halved
  • 1 lime
  • 3 tbsp green seasoning
  • 350g all-purpose flour, for the dumplings
  • 200ml water, for the dumplings
  • 1 tsp salt, for the dumplings
  • 60ml neutral oil
  • 1 onion, sliced
  • 6 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 3 tbsp Trinidad curry powder
  • 120ml water, for slaking the curry
  • 3 pimento seasoning peppers, chopped
  • 400ml coconut milk
  • 1 whole scotch bonnet, left unbroken
  • 1 tbsp amchar masala
  • 6 chadon beni leaves, chopped
  • 2 tsp salt

The skills inside

The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilSalted water & the float testShaping by hand

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · shellfish

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Wash the crab with the lime and cold water, drain it well and rub the green seasoning right into the shells and body cavities.
  2. Knead the flour, dumpling salt and water into a stiff dough, roll it into ropes, cut thumb-length pieces and flatten each once; hold them under a cloth.
  3. Slake the curry powder with the 120ml water to a loose paste. Fry the onion and garlic in the oil until fragrant, pour the paste in and cook, stirring, until the water has gone, the paste darkens and oil breaks out at the rim, 4 to 5 minutes. 5 min
  4. Add the crab, pimento and salt and turn everything through the dry curry for 3 minutes, then pour in the coconut milk and float the whole scotch bonnet on top. 3 min
  5. Drop the dumplings in, cover and hold at a bare simmer for 20 to 25 minutes; they are ready when they float and a cut one shows no chalky core. 25 min
  6. Stir the amchar masala and chadon beni through off the heat and let the pot stand 5 minutes before serving. 5 min

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Shaping by hand 85 recipes

  • The pieces match: weighed, or judged against each other rather than by dividing the mass by eye, so that no piece is half again the size of its neighbour.
  • Surfaces are smooth and unbroken with no cracks, tears, or dry patches, and the seams are sealed and sitting underneath.
  • The shape is defined and it holds while the tray waits: it has not slumped, spread, or relaxed back out of its form.
  • Nothing is trapped that should not be: no air pocket where filling should be, no filling breaking through the surface, and no excess flour greying the outside.
  • They finish together in the heat: no piece done while another is still raw, which is the only test that the first mark was met.

Where it goes wrong The dough was worked past its point or shaped without a rest, so it fought back: the pieces spring out of shape on the tray and bake tight, uneven, and torn along the surface.

The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil 183 recipes

  • The surface is read rather than assumed: bubbles break slowly in one or two places, or the surface merely shivers, and it does not reach a rolling boil at any point.
  • It was held there: the pot was watched and the heat adjusted rather than set once and left, and there is no tide mark up the pot wall from a boil-over.
  • The liquid stayed as clear as it should be: no clouding from agitation, and no fat churned into an emulsion through it.
  • Whatever is in the liquid is still intact: nothing shredded, broken up, or worried apart by movement.
  • The level is roughly where the elapsed time should have left it; a large drop is the evidence that it ran hotter than this while nobody was looking.

Where it goes wrong It was brought to a boil and then left on the same heat, so it churned for the whole cook: the liquid clouded, the fat emulsified into it, and the solids broke apart into the broth.

At the Table

The Pour
Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
Also Right
Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
From the Taps
Crisp lager or pilsner
Zero-Proof
Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea

Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Curry Crab and Dumpling The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Trinidadian kitchen