Spicy Crab by a Peranakan Spice Master.
Quick Bite
Our first foray into traditional seafood coming from someone’s house was an eye-opening experience. It’s a new take on the classic chilli crab, unique enough to showcase the chef’s prowess and individuality but familiar enough to still be as comforting as a family night at Long Beach. The quality of the food, ingredients, and the flavours were all top notch. Perfectly cooked chilli crab, a refreshingly unique sauce and exceptional mantou that I still dream about days later. My only regret was not buying more.
The chef behind Rumah Kitchen & Spice has always been inspired by skilled home chefs. Being ‘Baba’ (Peranakan/Straits-born), he’s always felt a need to be able to cook at a certain level. Watching and learning from his mother helped him take his first steps into mastering spices. A desire to ‘belanja’ (treat) his family to seafood more often led him to experiment in his kitchen, to see if he could cook at restaurant standards with his own twist. Thus, Rumah (home in Malay) Kitchen & Spice was born, and today we have the privilege of tasting Chilli crab cooked by a Peranakan spice master.
Like Yin and Yang, chilli crab and mantou complement each other in perfect balance. A good chilli crab can be marred by a weak mantou and vice versa.
THE BUNS
For our meal, we opted for the deep-fried mantou for a more traditional feel. They came wrapped in paper towels to ensure that they wouldn’t become laden with oil on the delivery trip, a considerate move by the seller. Cracking open the golden-brown exterior revealed a dense but still surprisingly soft and fluffy interior. The slightly sweet, soft and delicate insides paired perfectly with the crisp, oily crust. I went through 3 of them before I even got to the crab. Unlike some other deep-fried buns, these didn’t leave me with a queasy ‘jelak’ feeling after eating one too many. I still felt clean and healthy, a testament to the precise timing and skill of the chef. For the ultimate test, I ate a bun when it was cold, and it was still every bit as delicious as it was when it was warm.
THE SAUCE
On to the sauce. The sauce wasn’t overly thick or laden with starch, but still managed to cling onto a dipped bun without any issue. The sauce itself leaned towards an overarching spicy flavour rather than a tomatoey flavour. The flavour was unlike anything I’ve tried from most seafood restaurants, but that’s the magic of ordering from unique chefs operating out of their homes. You can almost taste the individual personalities of the people who cooked your dinner tonight. It wasn’t overly spicy to the point of overlapping the other flavours, and I could still pick apart the flavours of the underlying ingredients. While our preferences varied, everyone who ate the sauce agreed across the board that it was delicious.
THE CRAB
The crab was packed with the sauce, with the coriander packed separately, another considerate move (for the coriander haters out there). The crabs here are the ubiquitous mud crab, the same as you’ll find in most seafood shops. A good hit from the back of a knife separated the claw meat from the shell, the sign of a fresh, good quality crab. The meat itself was tender and had all the hallmarks of being perfectly cooked. The flavours of the sauce marinated itself into the meat, manifesting in light yet palpable undertones of chicken broth and gentle spice. Dipping an intact claw into a tub full of sauce before eating it whole is undoubtedly one of Singaporean life’s greatest pleasures, and we enjoyed every minute of it. It was sweet, spicy and slightly salty with umami tucked in between. The crab itself was easy to peel, with surprisingly fleshy legs. I had no problem digging into a set of crab legs instead of duelling for the remaining claw because it wasn’t difficult to eat and had the same delicious flavour.
