How to Cook Live Crab

As a kind of fishing, crabbing was as easy at it got, as long as the crabs were abundant. Just tie a chicken neck to a crab net, lower the net into the water, then check it every 5 minutes or so. Sometimes you would pull the net up to find three or four crabs fighting over that piece of chicken.
Catching crabs usually leads to cooking them, and that in turn usually means boiling them alive, as you would with a lobster. While some people are squeamish about this, it's really the only way to prepare fresh crab and make sure you won't get sick from eating it. That's because crab (again, like lobster) tends to decay quickly following death. It really requires immediate cooking.
So, here's how to do the deed:

1. Get a big pot or pan, fill it 2/3 full of water, and bring to a rolling boil on top of the stove.
2. While the water is boiling, pour in about 1/4 cup of salt.
3. When the water returns to boiling, drop in the live crab.
4. Boil for 15 to 25 minutes. The larger the crab is, the longer you should boil it.
5. Pour everything into a sink and thoroughly rinse the crab in cold running water.
Now, that was the easy part of preparing a crab to be eaten. Getting at the meat after it has been cooked is trickier, especially if you've never done it before.
First, you should twist off the legs and claws and set these aside. Next, hold the crab's body, head upward, and smack the bottom edge against a counter surface or chopping board. Lay the crab on its back and, with your thumbs, push the center of its body out of the shell. You'll see a small sac just behind the mouth of the crab--pull this out and throw away. You also should be able to recognize gills connected to the center part of crab; these should also be discarded.
You'll find meat in four places on the crab. What remains of the center part after you have followed the instructions above will be meat; just section it or pull it apart to use it. There will also be meat attached to the inside of the shell, which you can scoop out with a spoon. You will definitely want to retrieve the delicious meat to be found in the claws--do this by cracking the claws with something heavy such as a mallet. Finally, the legs themselves will contain some meat, which you can get at in the same way you do the claws.

Let Me Teach You How To Cook Spaghetti Carbonara

Garlic or onion, pecorino or parmesan, bacon or ham, cream or butter – how do you like your carbonara, and what's the secret to getting that perfect consistency?
A dish whose principal ingredients are eggs and bacon was always going to be a shoo-in for the British palate: certainly spaghetti carbonara was a regular in my dad's repertoire when pesto was only a glint in a supermarket buyer's eye. As with so many Italian foodstuffs, it has a disputed history, although most people accept that carbonara probably originated in, or near Rome.

It's apparently named after the carbonai, or charcoal burners, allegedly because it was a favourite of these grimy men who spent months deep in the Apennines, relying on foodstuffs that could be easily transported, stored and then prepared over a fire. Sophia Loren claims to have happened upon a group of these lucky fellows while filming Two Women in the mountains in the late fifties – who obligingly cooked her a slap-up carbonara lunch.

Loth as I'd be to contradict the legendary Loren, there are people who believe that the whole carbonaio thing is simply a romantic legend, suggesting instead that the dish was created by local cooks for American GIs who took their rations of bacon and eggs to them to prepare over streetside charcoal braziers. More mature Romans dispute this however, claiming they remember enjoying carbonara while said GIs were still eating milk and cookies at their mother's knees.

Most plausibly of all, in my opinion, is the theory that the name simply refers to the copious amounts of black pepper customarily added to the dish: so much, in fact, that it's almost as if it's been seasoned with charcoal. It's one of those things which people will no doubt still be squabbling over as the earth implodes: far more important, in my opinion, is working out how to make a really good one. Which is where I come in.