Fried Blue Swimmer Crabs with Red Capsicum and Yellow Bean Dressing

Crabs. I'd never had them before and apparently, that's a good thing. I agree.
Wandering around the Vic Market the other day, I was looking for something interesting to cook for Friday night dinner. I came across these amazingly Blue, Blue Swimmer Crabs. I didn't really have any idea what I could do with them, I bought them and figured I'd work that out later.
Browsing through Ezard's latest book, Lotus- Asian Flavours, I came across this recipe, which sounded quite easy, so I thought I'd give it a go. It turns out that the recipe was in fact quite easy, but I won't be giving it to you, simply because I wouldn't recommend trying it. I will give you a basic run down though.
Firstly you need to clean the crabs by pulling up the top shells and rinsing the insides out and removing the gills. Once they're clean, cut them into quarters and marinate them in fish sauce.

You then need to make your dressing, which basically consists of coconut cream, chilli, Yellow Bean Paste, Garlic, and Shallots.
You then need to dip your crab pieces in rice flour and then deep fry for a few minutes until cooked and orange in colour.

Now you're ready to serve your crab with some lemon and coriander. But seriously, don't bother. We had 4 crabs between 3 of us and we sat there for about an hour picking through the pieces and barely got any meat out of the crabs, let alone enough to dip into the dressing. If we did attempt to dip any in the dressing, it would just fall into the liquid, gone forever.
I don't think I'll ever be making any recipes with crab in it again. It's a pain in the bum and waste of money. The crabs were $13kg and I reckon we got probably 200 - 300g of meat out of them. I had to cook an extra meal afterwards just so my guests could leave without being hungry. They do look pretty cool on the plate though. I used the top shell as a garnish- there's actually no meat in that top shell.