Fried soft-shell crabs with carrot & coriander salad

Soft-shell crabs are a weird phenomenon, although it is quite natural for a crab to lose its shell in order to grow - and the new shell, as it develops, is soft enough to cook and eat. I remember once being offered soft-shell lobsters by my fishmonger, which I couldn’t resist. I fried them in the same way as the crabs here and they too were totally delicious. If you can’t get fresh soft-shell crabs from your fishmonger, you can usually find them frozen in Oriental supermarkets.