hi i'm here for the crabs on a leash?

I heard about the Quebec Snow Crab not too long ago. It's a species indigenous to the Canadian Atlantic provinces, supposed to be really sweet and succulent... but crab season is very short, in fact, almost over!! Living by my firm principle that no crab season can end before I get my hands on- or teeth in- one, I headed out to Jean Talon market with a bunch of friends on Friday. My mind was saturated with crabcrabcrabcrabcrab that when we arrived, I almost walked right past a chocolate truffle stand.

Me no walk past no chocolate.

A jolly bald guy missing a few teeth welcomed us with little swabs of truffles from a pot. That’s right, truffle in a pot, how often do you see that?! To solve the problem of melting truffles in the summer sun he said. ALL the chocolate is hand-made, or more precisely, home-made by his wife who gets ‘pregnant’ with each recipe and carries it to perfection. The name of their chocolate is ‘Les Amourgandises’, a wonderful play on the words amour (love) and gourmandise (greediness) that of course, are the basic concepts that governs the relationship of any sane normal person with chocolate.

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Truffles with porto:
Fairly normal pairing, but the first time I’ve had it. And it was gooooood. The sweetness of the port wine really brings out the semisweetness of the chocolate.

Truffles with rum and papaya juice:
While rum is very commonly incorporated in chocolate, but papaya juice?? Curious as it may seem at first, the subtle papaya lends a touch of fruitiness that makes the truffle a bit more memorable than a normal rum one.


Truffles with Grand Marnier and Lennoxville pimentos:
As we were told to expect, it hits you in 3 waves – the semisweet chocolate, the sweet Grand Marnier then the mildly spicy pimentos which lingers on your tongue. As with many spicy chocolates, I expected the flat powdery aftertaste of chili powder but there was none. The spiciness was full-bodied thanks to that row of pimentos (given fresh by a friend from Lennoxville who grows it) strung up, air-dried and ground for that authentic taste.

Caramel:
Ok, normally I hate caramel. Hate as in bleargh yeeerg arrrgh hate. It’s too damn sweet and is topped on my instant diabetes list only by the baklava floundering in syrup that I had in Turkey once. But this home-made caramel! It was thick yet not too sweet, ... But I still wouldn’t eat a whole bunch of it.

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A little stomach growling drew us to a sausage and ribs stand, but no ordinary pork sausages here but made from game. Buffalo on a stick anyone? Wild boar? They tasted, how do I say this without incurring ridicule, ........ meaty, really very... meaty, the way beef tastes more meaty than say chicken. It just feels fuller and bloodier somehow, too bad it was a tad too salty.

I also managed to sample la tire d’érable, even though it was likely leftovers since sugaring season in this area is over. La tire d’érable is basically maple syrup tapped from a maple tree that is heated and thickens on cooling to form a more viscous gel served in a plain mini-cone. It reminded me a lot of the malt sugar candy (麦芽糖 ) that we get at the pasar malam.

Finally, I went to get my crab. I had actually gone to the live crab stand a bit earlier, just to recce the prices for a bit and so I asked the guy how long the crabs would keep off ice if I still intended to walk around the market for a bit. He said laughingly,

‘You want to walk around some, you take the leash and walk the crabs with you!’

Then he added that they closed only at 8pm and not to worry, there is always a supply of freshly boiled crabs. So when I came back to the stand about an hour later, I promptly quipped,

‘Hi I’m here for the crabs on a leash?’

With a laugh, he bagged two halves for me and charges me C$11. One crab. C$11. Wah piang, it’d better be tastier than my 3 for S$10 mud crabs.

I just steamed the crab for a bit and made a little sauce with whatever I had in the fridge, kind of a mishmash replacement remoulade. To accompany it, we seared some button mushrooms, pan-fried potato cubes with herbs and tossed a green salad. The result? Ta-daaaaaa!


Verdict:
The crab smelt very fishy, but don’t let the nose judge what the mouth is supposed to. The meat is very sweet and the shell is soft enough such that the long leg segments can be opened up without fuss. You just bite along the long edge and use your fork as you would a letter-opener and flip it right open like a book. It tasted really good on its own and really needed no dipping sauce, though I did enjoy it with the dip a lot. The flesh is much more fragile than the mud crabs or Sri Lankan crabs, not as firm for sure and its sweetness and long legs remind me a lot of the spider crabs I had when I was in Hokkaido. (Apparently, another name for snow crab is spider crab so I guess they're one and the same.) Snow crab season is ending in a week or two at most. What I would really like to do now is to get a live crab and boil it myself to see if it still has that fishy smell, and also to see if I can get any of the roe which is usually heavenly, especially in chili crabs… mmmm.

Can’t wait to go home and have crabs. Chili crab, black pepper crab, white pepper crab, crab bee hoon…. Mmm… And that’s only the crab part of my To Eat When I Go Home list…