I saw it, I bought it. I thought: I will cook it the way my father would have cooked it.

Alive: all crustaceans must be.

I had to taste it. Everyone talks about it, good and bad. Since it is an alien species in our parts, being native to the American coasts and is also an invasive and for now ineradicable predator – it eats practically everything, putting various types of fish farms at risk -, it seems that the best thing to do is feed on it.

I don’t know how effective this solution is: we would have to eat it every day and it wouldn’t be enough to eradicate it.

I had two medium-small crabs, so it wasn’t worth opening it and digging through the cartilage to collect the little pulp. I then cut them into pieces, taking care to break the claws and larger legs to facilitate the extraction of the meat once cooked.

Extra virgin olive oil, garlic and chopped parsley, a few drops of white wine, a lid and the cooking started with all the raw ingredients.

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This way it was cooked delicately without taking on the strong flavor of cooked oil. A few minutes and when it changed color (yeah, yes, it turns red too), I added the tomato. I put the lid back on and cooked for a few more minutes.

Meanwhile the pasta was already cooking: short, so as not to go too crazy as necessary, given that the crab itself is quite a feat.

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It took a good half hour to go from “this to this”, as well as the help of some small tools.

The taste? delicate.

My father would have used”spernocchie” (spernocchie – mantis shrimp -: they have a thousand names. What do you call them?) or scampi or a large spider crab, which in my area is called “margherita”. All shellfish with a much stronger flavor than the blue crab, but if we have to save the planet from crabs…

What entices us, beyond curiosity, is also their cost: an average of 8 euros per kilo.

Try it!