Talangka or Hairy Crabs

There’s a lot of food scare going on these days, and I'm thinking “what’s next?” Wala na bang safe kainin!? From Milk to Eggs to crackers and so on… do we still have any options? Well, for me I just don’t mind them, because I know everything eaten in moderation is just fine. Besides, healthy or not, our time will come and we'll all die. Nyahahaha!
Just like eating Crabs. Oh, I soooo love crabs! Small crabs, alimango (mud crabs), alimasag (blue crabs). I even tried eating damuko.
In our childhood days (oh, don’t count back!), my siblings and I walk a kilometer long to and from our school. Along the road are lots of rice fields and a number of prinsa (it’s a wooden gate for letting the water in and out of the rice fields)
-or irrigation canal, and on these prinsa we can see baby crabs or pakot swimming and climbing up and down the wooden gate. Sometimes, we’d be curious and take a handful of them only to put them back and wait for the peak season of catching small crabs or “talangka.” It’s during the rainy seasons when you’d be able to find lots of talangka in the ricefields. We’ll use a fishing rod with fish bait or bintol (a square net with bamboo frame) or bikbik (made of coconut shell) to trap the crabs. We don’t only have fun then; we also earned some money, especially if we were able to catch more female than male crabs, because it’s sold separately, the female costs higher than male. (Of course females are more valuable… biased me… hehehe).
I really miss that part of my childhood, sighs...
Talangka is now rare in Hagonoy (Bulacan), maybe one of the reasons is the change from rice farming to fish farming and another is the use of fertilizers and processed feeds.
Gladly, I still can enjoy female crabs in this part of the world… not as how I enjoyed it before but a bit close. They are called hairy crab here, very much like talangka but bigger, but I'm sure it’s talangka.

I asked my suki in the wet market for this, “ci maoxie” or female crab, and this is the "smallest" i get when i asked for small ones.

I washed them clean and put it in the casserole. Place it covered on the stove top, of course you should turn the heat on...

and wait till they turn orange-y...

and there they are trying to run away from me….ha ha ha!


That's how i usually cook my talangka - steamed or halabos. I also make burong talangka whenever there are smaller ones available.