Chilli crabs may be our national seafood dish – voted everyday by scores of feeders who give not a hoot about how messy gnawing on a crab claw can be, just so they can bite into the sweet flesh, just before the sauce drips off the mouth and back onto the plate. Ahh, fresh Sri Lanka crab claw flesh slathered in red hot and earthy chilli crab sauce, thickened with, among others, tomato paste and blended chilli, down the hatch. Followed by a chomp on a sweetish and shiny fried mantou buns dipped in the eggy thick sauce. It completes me!

It began when the cooks at the original Palm Beach by the sea eatery in Upper East Coast decided to throw some tomato paste and chilli sauce into their wok of crabs to wake the jaded palates of their genteel spice-loving customers. That birth of our national crab dish was over fifty years ago and today, oh my, it has evolved. These days, they lower stuff like buah keluak (Indonesian black nut) and even peanut butter in them (a top chef’s trick) into the sauce.

Then, some genius at Long Beach, a competitor nearby, decided to powder the whole crab, in a challenge to this fast-catching-on and very appealing chilli crab, with crushed black pepper and garlic. It was another massive hit and overnight, it was on many menus of seafood restaurants around - 1 to chilli crabs, 1 to black pepper crabs, love-all for foodies. The dish went onto version 2.2 when testy and kiasu chefs decided to splash some Chinese Hsiaoxing wine over the black dish, just to sweeten the deal. They even use butter, instead of regular oil, to lend more roundness to the meal. It caught on like wildfire – on a wok of black pepper.

“But, honestly, black pepper crabs has a little bitter aftertaste. Quite uncomfortable.”, so with that assessment, Mr Choo, founder of No Signboard Seafood, created the white pepper crab – the most harmless and innocent looking crab dish that can floor King Kong anytime, especially with those dainty green and soft scallions peeking at you. It has the vodka effect; it hits you gently and later, makes you talk with a strange accent, not helped by the swollen red lips and heavy breathing through the mouth. The pepper crab dish, by now, has come of age. So, what’s next?

I’ll fire the next salvo- black and white pepper crabs and done with linguine.

The next dish to come - Black & White pepper Crab Linguine.

Ingredients: (for two persons)
• 1 kg of meat crab (chopped to 6 parts)
• Butter 250gms(quarter slab)
• Finely chopped garlic 1.5 tbsp
• Minced Ginger 1 tbsp
• Oyster Sauce 2 tbsp
• Sugar 1tbsp
• Salt to taste
• Crushed white pepper 1 tbsp
• Crushed black pepper 1 tbsp
• Hsiaoxing chinese wine 2tbsp
• 350gms of blanched linguine (till al-dente)
• Chopped scallions (2inches long) 3 stalks

Method
Steam the crab for about 15mins and set aside. Brown the garlic and ginger in the slab of butter. Add the oyster sauce and the two crushed peppers with the sugar with 200ml of water. Toss the steamed crabs in, toss and reduce and reduce till fragrant (about 1 minute of middle heat frying). Add salt to taste and toss the scallions in and fry for 10 seconds. Quickly splash the Hsiaoxing wine in toss for 5 seconds. Lower fire (from middle heat), remove the crabs and leave the sauce. Now toss the linguine in the remaining sauce. Plate, top with the crabs and serve.