Hairy crab ✦ ◆

Crabe poilu de Shanghai

What it is

It is bought for its roe in a window of a few autumn weeks, and Suzhou practice sets the order: females in the ninth lunar month, males in the tenth, each taken when it is at its fullest. The same animal travelled to Europe in ballast water, was first recorded in the German river Aller in 1912, and now sits on the IUCN list of the hundred worst invasive species.

In the kitchen

Tie it and steam it belly up, twelve to fifteen minutes, with a perilla leaf on the shell, so the roe stays in the carapace instead of running into the basket. Eat it hot with Zhenjiang vinegar and a heap of shredded ginger — the roe sets waxy as it cools.

Goes with

Chinkiang vinegar Ginger Shaoxing wine Shiso Spring onion Soy sauce Dried chrysanthemum flower

In season alongside

Brown crab Cuttlefish Velvet swimming crab American lobster Bonito (katsuo) Brill

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