Hairy Crab by Ed Warren

I’ve a theory.

Judging by the fact that you’re spending your valuable time on a site dedicated to meat eating, you’ve probably accepted that you’re a carnivore.

You’ve got over the fact that, in order to eat the juicy red stuff that you crave, creatures that up until recently have been walking around living blameless lives of animal bliss, have to be rounded up, slaughtered, skinned chopped up, burnt to some degree of your choosing and then served with sauce and a parsley garnish.

No doubt, given that you’re reading a series of articles about the relative values of different types of meat, you probably consider yourself to be an enlightened meat eater. You’ve stared in the face of the simple truth that in order to enjoy your ribs, or your steak béarnaise or a grilled sea bass, living things have to be killed, killed dead.

You’re willing to take responsibility for the bolt in the cows brain, and (provided it’s humane) the sudden squealing, sticky end of a free-range pig, chicken or sheep is a price worth paying for bacon sandwiches, fried chicken and roast shoulders of mutton.

You’re probably the kind of meat eater who goes for the whole ‘nose to tail’ theory of meat eating, and skips merrily through the more squelchy delights of offal eating, because you know that meat comes from an animal, not just a polythene wrapped packet on the supermarket shelf, and the best way to honour the ‘sacrifice’ of that animal is to make use of as much of it as possible.

Still, despite all of that being the case, despite your undoubted sophistication and your rationalisation of your carnivore status, here’s my theory: I bet you’ve never eaten sea otter. Or baby seal. Or dolphin steak. Or a family pet.

You haven’t have you.

And if you’re honest even the idea of chowing down on a wickle baby seal with those big eyes and cute button nose makes you feel a little queasy. As does the idea of kebabing a sea otter and sucking the meat of those delicate human-like hands, or Flipper burgers, or chasing Fluffy through the yard with a claw hammer so that you can see how he tastes with black bean sauce.

You see none of us are true carnivores in the sense that a polar bear is a true carnivore. We’re too fat and happy, too human, too empathetic to really be as red in tooth and claw as we claim. None of us (unless we are in need of some serious counselling) could walk for the first time into an abattoir and see doe-eyed veal calves being shot in the brain, having their throats cut and being bled over the floor, without feeling some twitch of guilt in some deep place inside ourselves.

And we can’t avoid this slight twinge of guilt, it’s something that’s as much a part of being human as our appetite for meat. Because our offspring are so defenceless for so long, evolution has hardwired us to respond empathetically to cute defenceless things, to feel sympathetic to little creatures with big eyes. It’s the reason why we have pets, why parents dote on their scrunch-faced howling spawn and why pictures of saucer eyed kittens are almost as popular on-line as pictures of… well…pussy.

Now, as anyone who has thought that a restaurant was a good place to have that ‘we need to talk’ conversation with a soon-to-be ex will tell you; guilt and food don’t mix all that well. Feeling sick, nervous and flushed should be something that happens at the end of a meat-feast not throughout it. So it follows that meat that makes us (in some deep, primal, “protect the younglings” place) feel slightly guilty, isn’t as good as meat that doesn’t.

Friends, let me introduce you to the guilt-free meat. Hairy Crab.

With the exception of cockroaches or some particularly hideous deep sea fish it is without a doubt one of the ugliest creatures on the planet. It has the chitinous, alien eyes and waving mandibles of all crabs, but comes with the somehow supremely horrifying curse of thick tuf ts of underarm hair and a scraggy beard. It is the derelict hobo of the crustacean family. Other shellfish, the lobster say, comes across as having George Clooney levels of charisma compared to this ugly bottom feeder.

I challenge anyone to look into the stalk eyes of the crab and feel the slightest shred of empathy. You can’t. It’s like trying to feel comradeship with a Brussels sprout. And, as we’ve established, no empathy means no guilt, and no guilt means… good eating.

“Whatever” I hear you say, “so it’s ugly, who cares, how does it taste?”.

Now, the Chinese have been gourmands for a long, long time. Whilst we were still living in mud huts, burning unseasoned mutton on communal fires and daubing each other blue for the next rape and pillage outing, those wily Orientals were busy building a complex culinary tradition and history that stretches back, unbroken for over three thousand years.

Confucius himself, writing two hundred years before Christ, describes himself as knowing about the art of cooking and since the establishment of China in 221 BC knowledge and appreciation of the culinary arts has been considered one of the cornerstones of the “complete man”.

So, when every year China’s most populace city goes on a two month long culinary bender, a seasonal feast that is eulogised in major works of Chinese literature like ‘The Dream of the Red Chamber”, a gourmet event that has had poets writing love songs to this particular food and leads to legions of restaurants popping up just to serve this one ingredient, you sort of feel that we Westerners with our paltry few hundred years of culinary history should probably pay attention.

What do they go mad for? What is the magical meat that for the months of October and November turns the 20 million strong population of Shanghai into baying foodies? What is the flesh that in over twenty restaurants in Shanghai is the only thing on the menu? Which beast can be sold for over 3 Chinese dollars per gram of meat?

The answer is our friend the ugly, guilt-free Hairy Crab. And when you’ve eaten a meal where every dish is graced by this ‘king of meats’: from the steamed crab dumplings, to the crab meat bok choi to the glorious creature itself, served whole, steamed golden brown, fat with succulent white meat, tender and juicy beyond anything you’ve ever eaten, then you’ll understand what all the fuss is about.

So the Hairy Crab: a meat delicious beyond compare, prized above all other by the most advanced culinary culture on the planet and totally without any shred of the ‘cute-guilt’ that plagues all sentient carnivores.

A vote for Hairy Crab is a vote for supreme culinary joy unmarred by guilt, and if you can’t bring yourself to, then next time you’re in Shanghai in October make sure you suck on one.

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Comments

[Jared]

Is Fluffy a cat or a dog?

[Ed Warren]

Fluffy is an Opussum. With big eyes.

[Jared]

Awww.

[Angus Whines]

Fabulous!