In a recent trip to Zamboanga City, a gracious (magnanimous, I should say) friend sent us loads of curacha and lapu-lapu. Lapu-lapu is all to familiar to us Manila-based folks so let me tell you about la curacha.
The Spanish term for cockroach (which I abhor from the depths of my being), I think the curacha doesn't deserve the unflattering name. The curacha is a sea crab specie which can be found in the waters of Zamboanga. This crustacean is like 'crab-leveled-up.' Outside, you'll see a pagong-like (turtle-like) appearance but with tentacles. Andy describes it like the predator in the alien movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
 |
| The alien look of the curacha |
 |
| Meaty Curacha! |
Once you remove the 'gigantic' cover, what appears is like the regular crab except that the shell is harder (I had to use a knife to cut the body in the middle). The tentacles also have less meat. The curacha-meat is like crab-meat but firmer. The taste is also similar but i'd say it has more texture as the strands of meat are thicker (more like crab-meat has hair-like-strands, while curacha-meat has crochet-thread-like-strands). It also has loads of aligue (crab fat) that I had to literally restrain Andy from devouring all of it (it's his super fave!)
 |
| The "aligue" - Andy's favorite |
by Apple
No comments:
Post a Comment