Growing up, sea food was abundant. Mom would cook fish every other day though the delicacies involving crab and shrimp were reserved for Sundays. Crab was knuckle-challengingly the juiciest sea meat and Mom would refine and perfect her broth technique with crab thrown in a pot over the years that neighbors would inquire of the aromatic meat masala used in our gravies for their vegetarian curries. Neither learnt the clan-sourced procedure nor the masala used for cooking crab. Last week, I was chatting up with a friend on how we have adapted our native recipes to foreign produce. Crab came up in the discussion. Both agreed that we dress up zealously even the cooked crab meat found in stores which is ready to eat in a cocktail meal. Why do we do that? Don't know. She even confessed that she once cooked a curry out of smoked salmon. The tickling aroma or bright color from our Indian background forces us to overdo in our kitchen the off-the-rack eatables here. Today, as I was wandering past the sea food aisle, I spotted plain and handpicked crab meat that came with a recipe booklet not marinated in any cocktail sauce. Why not try Indian-styled accompaniment? The objective is to transform that pale (though cooked) meat into a zesty mouthful. First, saute onion and ginger garlic paste in a pan. Add mango powder, garam masala, ras el hanout (Middle Eastern spice mix), salt, chilly powder. Separately, soak sliced avocado in lemon and salt mix. My Mom would probably be aghast at this improvisation in a foreign land of spiced crab meat fry, that too dubiously sourced from a tin, over her marinated and 2-hour long utterly delicious crab cooked in her iron pot from freshly caught haul. Then I might have to remind her that it is only an accompaniment foraged from the best memories of my childhood.
About how much of ras el hanout? Equal in amount to which of the other spices? The rest I can approximate. It is quite similar to how I make it except for the M.E. spice mix.
Ras isn't the dominant aroma compared to the garam masala. Just a pinch of ras for a spoon of garam masala. You may ask, why the ras then? Well, what happened was I took to a Moroccan tagine in a restaurant here last year. I loved it so much. It smelled hunger even on a filled belly. Then I found about ras. It's mild compared to our garam masala but has lingering potency (rose petals and eastern spices). You can entirely skip it. Here's a picture of the powder from my dabba.
@Rihana, Shrimp, Crab, prawns, lobster would all (light meats!) become leathery if simmered too long in the spicy sauce. Sauce is made first, to an almost ready to serve stage, and then the (cooked, store-bought) seafood meat is added to it for a short period of time. I checked out the spice-mix ras el hanout: 1 1/2 teaspoons coriander seeds. 3/4 teaspoon cumin seeds. 1/2 teaspoon crushed chilli flakes. 1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon. 1 teaspoon paprika. 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom. 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger. 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric. and smiled, thinking that Rihana might mix up 50-50 sambar powder and garam masala.... to make ras el hanout, and she'd be right about it too.
Don't know ? Cultures have done this -- dress up plain looking/tasting foreign foods, in their own familiar things -- to make it much better. The Norwegian cod fish (or some variety of whitefish) is unique in its blandness. And it needs a lot of prework to even prepare that for cooking. What in the Heck Is a Lutefisk, and Why Do Minnesotans Eat It? However, the Brazilians who import it all the way from Norway, have songs about it, and even hot dance moves. Julio Iglesias - El Bacalao lyrics + English translation Portugese and Brasilians make Bacalao dishes with their own special spices and sauces.