Crab sour soup, tasty rural delicacy

Today, I would like to introduce you a local dish that is known to all rural kids who grew up in countryside. It is called សម្លម្ជូបុកក្តាម Crab sour soup.

I have no idea whether you have eaten paddy field crabs, but I assure you that this one is of the best childhood food, mom cooks it the best.

Crab sour soup

At the beginning of rainy season, when the rain starts to drop, there are fish and crabs start getting life and if you get crabs at this time, it tastes the best! Crabs can be threats to rice if there are too much of them - they will cut the paddy in the field. This soup is just one way to eat crabs. There are more ways we cook tasty crabs! I am going to bring you all to cook with me now. Before cooking, we need to prepare ingredients and prepare the crab. So, there are two steps into cooking this.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes

Course: Main dish with rice!

N#	Description	How to do it!
1	Ingredients	Meat: 0.5kgs of paddy field crabs, with or without small fish Vegetable Best to have taro leaves to go with crab, if not, then a small fruit of wax gourd/winter melon or gourd (clean and cut them small like finger size) Spices 2tbs of salt 1.5tbs of fermented fish 1 tbsp powder soup / MSG (if you use it) 1 tsp of palm sugar 2krams of tamarind leaves (clean and cut into small pieces) 2tbs of paddy herbs (clean, cut small pieces)
2	Prepare crab	Clean crab, separate its shells and belly. Keep the​ back shells aside The belly need to take out its lung and belly shells. Pound the crab belly well into the mortar. Use about 0.75liters of water to mix with the pounded crab, the idea is to get its taste through the flesh only by using the filter to separate juice from the shells (Please note that since paddy field crab is small so it is not easy to get its flesh, pounding them and use the juice from is the only way) where the remaining shell will be threw away. In order to get all juice from the shell, you have to repeat the filting few times until the shells have no flesh less.  Keep the juice aside (which will be used for the soup).​ The shells less from filtering have to be thrown away.
3	Instructions on how to cook	Boil 1.25liters of water, add salt (If you use fish too, put them now) When boiling, put fermented fish in Then, put wax gourd, wait for it to get boiling Put tamarind leaves, put the back shells of the crabs in Pour the crab juice in the soup, just 1-2mns only as the water boiling, hurry to take the soup pot off the stove (keep longer, the crab will be tasteless and spoil the whole soup as it starts to smell not so good) Add paddy field herbs and chili (if you prefer) It is ready to dig in!

Ingredients for the soup: crab juice, wax gourd, tamrind leaves and paddy field herbsRemove the belly and lung, pound them in the mortar, filter the crab for its juice (by adding water but not too much) and there, the juice from the crab, keep it to use in the soup!How to prepare crab: clean, separate the back shells from front shells. Front shells, we have to remove its lung and other things, keep legs and its body

This dish, you might be able to order from the restaurants but I don't think there are so much available. It is more family food and whenever you show it to local people, they would say oh they miss it and they love it. Not many people know how to cook this dish properly. My younger sisters cannot cook it. Some people don't even know which part of the crab we are using. Luckily, I learnt it from my mom as a kid, I often saw her cooked this and the taste was beyond amazing.