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This is the continuation of the weekly Thai Food Cooking Blog about the main ingredients for popular dishes. This week we cooked crab roe relish (น้ำพริกไข่ปู) for you. In Thai this is called "nam prik kai pu". The main ingredients, as seen in the picture below, are crab, fish sauce, garlic cloves with bird's eye chillies, lime juice and sugar cane in the center. You can also use palm sugar. Some recipes also add shrimp paste (kapi) and even shredded green mango. The redness in the crab is the egg of the female crab. You need to steam or boil this in advance.

To make this relish, you need a mortar and pestle. You can see our one in the picture below. You only need to lightly peel the garlic cloves by nipping the top and bottom. Add these to the mortar together with some of the crab. Pound away and then add more crab. Season with the fish sauce, lime juice and sugar cane. We didn't use all of the seasoning as we got it just right and didn't want to spoil the taste. The taste should be salty, sour and hot. Maybe too hot!

The relish is served with some fresh vegetables such as peeled cucumbers.