I come across this place that sells mitten crabs, mantis shrimp and other imported seafood. I’ve not bought, but will probably give it a try at some point. Wanted to see if anyone has experience with it or similar services.
wechat: ultrafreshinc/ SMS: 408 296 9355
Male mitten crab: 454g/ $35 box- 3 crabs each. Each 3.1 tael
Female mitten crab: 500g/ $45 box- 4 crabs each. Each 2.5 tael
Frozen crabs from Jiangsu
Cooked/ frozen mantis shrimp in 10lb box. Each box has 10 bags. Not sure price. But these and other seafood seems to come in pretty large sizes. Probably need to split with others.
Woah I didn’t even think the US allowed imported mitten crabs. I don’t know if they got it from this place. I’m just speculating based on the phone number but 408 seems more towards San Jose and I doubt broadway cafe would go so far.
Actually, I’ve purchased live ones back around 1990 in Monterey Park. No idea how they smuggled them in. Last fall, I’ve seen frozen crabs in some Chinese Markets. Not sure if it is pre-cooked or not though.
Maybe they just sent someone to catch them in the SF Bay/ Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta? After all, its an invasive species over there. So perhaps there isn’t much fishing rules for those species?
As an undesirable invasive species, mitten crab take is very clear.
No live crabs may be in procession. You must dispatch the crab immediately upon landing. If you keep a live crab, you will be fined if searched.
My wife loves mitten crabs. When the invasion became big news a few years ago, I had fantasies of harvesting all the crabs we and friends can consume.
Was not the case. We spent a fair amount of time fishing the delta, rivers and San Pablo Bay. I have not caught or even seen one crab on a couple hundred+ fishing trips.
For whatever reasons, the catastrophic invasion never happened. Just have to cough up USD$20 a crab in HK. Ouch.
I was in HK in September, 1997 when the stock markets crashed. The first Yancheng Lake hairy crabs had just come in, and were on sale at astronomical prices. Suddenly the price of the crabs plummeted 50%. The crab are called Da Zha crabs (大闸蟹) in Chinese, and 大闸 sounds like “goes down” in Cantonese; they suddenly had become a bad omen.
Not mitten crab or mantis shrimp, but just got some very fresh ‘fan clam’ from some lady on Wechat in a house in Newark. Either $8 or $9 a pound. They have empress clam at $6 a pound and sea cucumber as well. Sometimes they have smaller local rock fish and sometimes 2 pound Alaskan rock fish.
Steamed for 3 minutes with ginger garlic and green onion. Yummy. Needed to do a better job myself next time to get rid of the sand/ mud though.
I really need to get out more. Same male and female mitten crabs as the ones I saw on the online groups are sold right at Marina Cupertino, plus packages of mantis shrimps as well. Cheaper too. All cooked.
The mitten crabs are $30 per box for both male and female. The mantis shrimps are $8.99 for each pound bag. There are a few brands too.
Two things jump out at me: (1) the dazha crabs are apparently farmed (a practice that’s new to me) and (2) they are cooked “spicy.” The latter makes me suspicious of the quality. Dazha crabs are known for the delicate sweetness of their flesh, and generally eaten without without, or with minimal seasoning. Would you buy “spicy” cooked dungeness crabs? It would be a similar aberration.
I am curious about the cooked crabs too, in addition to cooked spicy for the male ones. I was wondering about the difference between the male and the female crabs at Marina too, because if I get it it would be the male ones, but the spices screw things up. I didn’t see unspicy male ones.
My understanding is live imports are prohibited so why cook them ahead of time. Naturally I prefer to cook my own seafood. I am not sure how much cooking, then freezing, changes the texture.
Farm raised I think is pretty prevalent these days. Too many of us for the crabs to deal with. That said, some of these are labeled with the source Yangcheng Lake, which I would suspect to be likely not true since I am sure they can fetch a higher price in China than selling them frozen in Marina Cupertino.
I’d eat spicy under the bridge dungeness if cooked well though. But even that isn’t very spicy.
Night07 I haven’t bought them yet. I was there to buy a fish so didn’t try.
The name fan clam is my own invention, just a translation of the name that I was told. I am sure it has a proper name. The shape of the shell looked like this:
That is a sea scallop, au naturel. We typically only get the abductor mussel and not the whole scallop. Probably deserves it’s own thread… Sea or Bay, dry or wet, day boat? My preference is Sea/dry. “Dry” is not what you might think, “dry” refers to the scallop not being stored in a wet bath on board the boat.
My only guess is this little thing from wikipedia:
"In Cantonese cuisine, the mantis shrimp is known as “pissing shrimp” (Chinese: 瀨尿蝦; pinyin: lài niào xiā; Jyutping: laaih niu hā) because of their tendency to shoot a jet of water when picked up. "
So… it somehow got mangled to PiPi rather than… PeePee?