We are in luck, here's another one.
Mud crabs a big. This one will be close to a kilogram.
Oh, that's nice man, look at that. These guys are like the crayfish of the top end.
Sweet, delicate and delicious.
I'm on Larrakia country with Daniel and Marlon Motlop and today we're cooking
mud crab.
Now we've got in front of us a heap of ingredients we're going to include.
What's this?
It's a bit of tamarind paste we've collected over the last couple of days
from from a few tamarind trees up here.
Tamarind paste and the tamarind tree was introduced by the Makassan traders way
way back when they were you know, searching the shores
searching our coastlines for trepang or sea cucumbers, which was a delicacy back in the day.
And the most important ingredient?
A bit of chilly Yeah, we're a bit of chilli so the chilies up here
traditionally are pretty hot.
And a lot of Darwin families use a lot of chilli, ginger, garlic. It's sort of
the main ingredients that you use.
Well, the more we talk about it, the more hungry I'm becoming. So let's get
into it, hey?
Sounds good to me.
So Marlon is just cleaning the crab and we just give a little crack.
Don't want to do too much, we just want a bit of juice to be able to get in there.
So now we're gonna go with some oil, nice hot pan, ginger and garlic.
Get that in there.
Be nice and generous with it.
That's really where your flavour is.
I'm going to go the red onion next and lemongrass, tomato and capsicum.
Smells beautiful.
Now we're gonna go with some fish sauce, some sweet chilli. A bit of that sugar
is going to go in there.
And we're going to add the tamarind as well.
Some really nice flavour to our dish.
You look at a lot of the dishes that our families, our aunties, uncles, parents
cooked back in the day and still cook now you know,
you could get away with cooking and buying the stuff for $10 to $12 and
they'll feed a family of you know 10 to 12.
Our people Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have big families.
That is right. A lot of cousins, hey? A lot of cousins to feed.
We're gonna get the mud crab in, I'll let you do the honours on that Rulla.
Just chuck it in bit like this? Yep, straight in.
Beautiful.
Give it a bit of a toss just to get those hot flavours.
Next up, we're gonna add a little bit of chilli, green and red, and chuck a bit
of basil on there.
You can let it sizzle away.
Smells unbelievable.
It smells like the top end, top end tucker
When that oil has turned orange you sort of know it means they're ready.
Now for the taste test, Rulla.
This is one of the best bits, you know the claws are really nice.
You know there's a lot of meat in them like that.
Brother. That's worth five days in the rain right there. How good is that?
Good stuff, hey?
It's reward for effort. And there's only one way to eat it. Messy.
Beautiful, tastes like the top end, hey? Out of 10?
12!