Moeche

Moeche are a specialty of the Venetian lagoon, especially the islands of Burano and Giudecca and the town of Chioggia, where the harvest is the work of specialist fishermen known as moecanti. Their craft — sorting crabs about to moult and holding them in submerged wooden cages until the shell softens — has been recognised since the time of the Venetian Republic and practised for at least three centuries; for much of that time it was a closely guarded trade secret of the Chioggia fishermen. The name comes from the Venetian dialect word for «soft», describing the moulted crab; the dish is listed in Slow Food's Ark of Taste.

Whole and small enough to eat in one or two bites, moeche are shatteringly crisp on the outside and soft, almost creamy within — there is no hard shell to fight, just a thin crackle giving way to tender crab. The flavour is intensely of the sea, sweet and briny, deeper and more concentrated than ordinary crab meat, with a savoury richness from the soft innards. The egg-and-flour coat fries to a delicate, lacy crust. They must be eaten hot and fresh from the oil; gone cold or fried limp they turn greasy and lose the contrast of crackle and cream.

The whole premise rests on timing the moult: as the crab outgrows its rigid exoskeleton it sheds the old shell, and for only a few hours — before the new cuticle hardens by mineralising with calcium — the entire animal is soft and edible. Fishermen exploit this by sorting the crabs by how close they are to moulting and holding the near-ready ones in lagoon cages, harvesting each just at the soft window. The traditional preparation soaks the live crabs in beaten salted egg for an hour or two so they take the egg up into the body; dredged in flour and plunged into hot oil, the thin egg-and-flour layer sets fast against the heat into a crisp shell, while the brief, intense frying cooks the soft crab through without time to toughen it. The lemon at the end cuts the richness of the fried, fatty innards.