Pity the other dishes at the dinner table when crab is served. Everyone is so focused on getting to every last bit of scrumptious crab meat, and slurping with orgiastic pleasure, that by the time they're done, all the other food has become cold. And anti-climatic. 

Like whole lobster and monster sushi rolls, crab is not a first date food. It's messy, and I have yet to meet anyone who looks attractive eating it. That said, if you want to make a great easy dish for intimate friends and family members (a.k.a. people you don't need to impress), give this crab recipe a try.

I learned this recipe from my grandpa, who loves crab so much he eats it once a week (apparently fresh crab at the wet market is even cheaper in Hong Kong than it is in mainland China.) And his method requires little more than ginger, scallions, and a cup of just-boiled salted water. No soy sauce, corn starch, or even rice wine needed. 

Just be sure to get your crab crackers and picks ready.

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More Chinese seafood recipes to try:

Chinese Steamed Fish with Black Bean and Ginger Sauce 

Dragon Well Tea Shrimp (Longjing Xiaren)

Coconut Milk Shrimp

As much as I'd like to remain objective on Chinese food, it's hard to hide my favoritism towards Cantonese fish. In Beijing, Shanghai, or Sichuan province, fish is most likely pan-fried, heavily sauced, or buried in a broth of chilies. That's all nice, but nothing beats the clear flavor of steamed fish, with nothing to disguise the freshness. Guangdong province is spoiled in its coastal proximity. No wonder steamed fish became so entrenched in the diet.

When I taught Chinese cooking classes, I often had students who were intimidated by steaming fish in a wok. And once they tried, they were surprised by how easy it is. So, here are a few simple steps to steaming a fish, Cantonese style.

1. Pick a live one. Or at least a fresh one. - Cantonese restaurants take pride in their enormous fish tanks. And my family almost never orders fish without picking one out themselves. To get the most out of this recipe, find a fish market or head to Chinatown. If you must use fish on ice, pick one that is properly store (well-covered with ice, not sitting in a puddle of cold water). And make sure the eyes are clear, not cloudy.

2. Invest in a wire steamer rack, also called a steamer insert. - They're cheap, a few bucks at the most. In a pinch, you can also turn a bowl upside-down; just make sure it's wide enough to balance your fish plate.

Wherever I am these days - whether it's Beijing, San Francisco, or Tampa - I am surrounded by tangerines and clementines. (The latter is possibly better known in California as Cuties®.) These in-season cousins of the orange make excellent snacks, especially when you're trying to fight off the seasonal cold. And they're CHEAP. At a Tampa-area supermarket I found a 10-tangerines-for-$1 deal, rivaling Chinese prices.

After eating about 200 tangerines this season, I decided to make tangerine salsa for Christmas Eve hors d'oeuvres. This salsa requires few ingredients and is equally tangy, salty, sweet, and hot. I made a lot yesterday, and can serve it straight out of the fridge tomorrow with a few chips, a precious time-saver considering I have other appetizer, sides, and a big ol' turkey to contend with. 

Another way to use this salsa is to bake fish with it. I bought some tilapia fillets, rubbed them with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and covered them with tangerine salsa. If you have the salsa already prepared, dinner is merely 10 minutes away.  

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Tangerine Salsa

Makes about 4 cups of salsa; feel free to halve recipe

Since my trip to Hangzhou's Dragon Well tea fields, I have made use of the famous leaves less often than I should have. See, I went on a tea-buying binge after coming back to Beijing. In my cabinet right now there is an ample supply of not only Dragon Well (longjing), but also sheng and shou Pu'er, rose buds, chrysanthemum, barley, hibiscus, a fruit tea mix, and regular green and black tea. I'm sure some native Chinese would scoff at my puny tea collection (just like I would scoff at their wine collections of Great Wall and Dynasty bottles from Carrefour), but for me that is quite a lot of tea for the months ahead.

My right-brain demeanor also leaves me unfulfilled when I just drink the tea. (Purists, you may not want to read ahead.) I also must do something with it. Things like making rice pudding with rose tea and alcoholic granita with hibiscus. But before getting too experimental with my longjing, I thought I should whip up the classic Hangzhou shrimp dish that uses the tea.

Yesterday I cooked without water. Well, not completely without water, but with trickles from the faucet. When the trickles eventually stopped, I used purified stuff from the water cooler in our living room. To rinse food, boil noodles, wash dishes, everything. Trickles.

See, Jacob and I live in a brand new apartment, so new that construction hasn't even stopped. Anyone who has visited Beijing (or China) in the past 10 years will know that the entire city (and country) is over-dosing on construction. In order to clean up the air for the Olympics, the government had mandated that all construction projects stop by June 1. Well, that deadlines has now been pushed back to July 1. And I'm annoyed not only because the air is still dusty, but also because we get periodic electricity and water outages, both announced an unannounced.

According to a notice in the "lobby", the water outage was supposed to occur between 10pm and 6am. Fine, I thought. We go out to a bar at night, come back late, and try not to use the bathroom 'til morning. Then the water stops in the middle of the afternoon. Not very convenient when you're making curry laksa. Laksa paste, bird's eye chilli seeds, and raw shrimp juice are not things you want to leave unwashed from your hands.

Thank goodness for the purified water, though I did feel a small amount of guilt.

Before I get to this delicious coconut milk shrimp dish, I want to share my misery. I'm one of those people who is terrible about backing up files. Two days ago, my hard drive crashed. Jacob and I spent all of yesterday trying to recover everything new since my last back-up in September, and managed to save my important documents and music. However, about 80% of the photos I have taken since September, including many many food photos, stand a good chance of being completely lost forever. (Agh!!!) And what pains me the most is that this could have been prevented by just taking a few minutes every week or two to back up my data on some external drive.

"If it makes you feel better," said Jacob, "in all my years of working in tech I have never known a photographer or videographer who hasn't lost of sh*tload of work because of they forgot to back up." So the lesson to you bloggers, writers, and photographers out there: Back up! Firewire drives are a cheap alternative to this anguish of losing months, or even years, of hard hard work. Computers are fickle and can die at any minute, even Macs.

I think my beloved iBook will work again with new hard drive. But the photos are most likely lost forever. For the time being my work has to be done on Jacob's laptop in the morning before he needs it for work. I know this crash isn't the end of the world, but for a writer and blogger who does most of her work with a computer (and with deadlines looming) this is a major setback. I will be kicking myself for a long, long time.

But for now, the shrimp.