Whole crayfish stir-fried and braised in a red, oily sauce of chilli, garlic, beer and spices, eaten with the fingers at night-market tables in summer.
What makes it changsha spicy crayfish
Whole crayfish, scrubbed and cooked in the shell.
Fried with dried and fresh chilli, garlic and ginger, then braised in beer or stock with star anise and other spices.
Finished with perilla or coriander, and eaten with the hands.
Where it comes from
Freshwater crayfish came to China from abroad in the twentieth century and spread through the rice paddies and lakes of the Yangtze basin. Changsha's way with them, kǒuwèi xiā — roughly 'strong-flavoured shrimp' — is usually traced to the city's night-market stalls in the 1990s.
It's now a summer ritual in Changsha, eaten by the basin with beer; versions differ from stall to stall, and some add Sichuan pepper for a numbing edge.