Karen's Crab Cakes

I seriously love crab.  And fortunately for me, my mom has spent her life on the east coast so she's an expert in seafood.  She grew up in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and spent a big chunk of her graduate school/ young adult years in Maryland so she's got all that knowledge and love.   Last time I was home she suggested crab cakes for dinner and I leaped at the opportunity to not just eat them but blog them so all of you lucky readers can make amazingly delicious crab cakes too.

These little babies are freaking amazing and you should definitely try them.

You'll Need:

1 lb crab meat

1 cup crushed Ritz crackers (about 1/2 a sleeve)

1 egg

2/3 cup mayo

1 tsp dry mustard

1 tsp Old Bay seafood seasoning

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

a dash of salt and pepper

optional: panko breadcrumbs

 

This scrumptious recipe uses canned lump crab meat.  Our family believes the lumpier the better when it comes to crab cakes, but to each his or her own.  You can always break it up a little more in your mixing process if you'd rather it have a more shredded-up feel.  

In a medium bowl, crush up your Ritz crackers.  Alternatively, you could use seasoned breadcrumbs.
Add your dry mustard, Old Bay, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper.

Next mix in your egg and a scoop of mayo.  If you want to go healthier, you can use a little milk instead.  Then slowly and carefully mix in your crab lumps.

As I said earlier, we're in the lumpier-the-better camp.  If you are too, then you'll want to gently fold the crab in with a big spoon like my momma's doing in the picture below.  If you don't mind it being broken up, then you can just stir it in and not worry a bit.

Once you're mixed in, make them into palm-sized little cakes.

Once your cakes are made, you can press some panko bread crumbs into each side.  It makes it a little bit more crunchy, but they'll be delicious either way.

Now that you're ready to cook, you might as well open up your wine if you haven't already for Charm Hour.  Usually they say you should have white wine with seafood, but we had this super special white cabernet sauvignon that actually looks like a rosé.

 This wine is made with cabernet sauvignon grapes- which usually make a dark, dry red wine.  But with this wine they remove the skins early in the fermenting process, leaving the wine with a hint of pink color, but a lighter taste that you'd associate with a white wine.  It's absolutely delicious.  It comes from Silver Springs Winery on the east side of Seneca Lake in upstate New York.  If you're in the area you should stop through for a tasting, and if not you can always consider ordering some.

 Back to those crab cakes!  Let's get cooking.  Heat up some olive oil and butter in a pan.

You can tell it's hot enough when A.  the butter is melted and B. if you splash a drop of water on the pan it sizzles.  Carefully place your little cakes into your hot pan and let them sit.

When they start to brown, gently scoop and flip them over.  The crab is already cooked, so it's really just heating it enough to cook the egg in there and make the outside crispy so don't worry too much about how long on each side.  

To round out our meal we also cooked up some salt potatoes and threw together a salad.

And now for the final product:

And now, as Joe keeps saying next to me, "I'm hungry for crab cakes just looking at them".  I think I'll be making these again myself one day soon.

More than anything, I'm thankful that I was able to get home to see my family and spend some time together.  Here's to you Mom, for instilling in me a love for crab (and wine).  I love you!

p.s.  If you're looking to make crab legs rather than using just the meat, check out my snow crab dinner here.  

Snow Crab Dinner

This week I started my first week of my last clinical.  Basically, I'm working full time alongside a nurse and transitioning into the role of a nurse.  This means we take on all aspects of their care- including using a pager to talk to physicians and hope I don't make a fool of myself.  Considering the only pager I'd even handled was a sparkly pink one that came with gum in it when I was five, I had an awkward learning curve.  But I'm getting it down!

I worked four days and then had Friday off, so Joe and I obviously had to celebrate- I'll take every excuse to celebrate- so we got hard to work at making dinner.

I have been in this phase where I'm obsessed with crab for a little while now.  It's less than ideal that I'm in the middle of the freaking country, but I'm making due.  Fortunately we have three grocery stores within a 15 minute walk/train ride, so I've surveyed the options before.  Trader Joe's has frozen crab cakes that are okay at best, and I barely trust Dominick's to sell edible chicken breasts.  That leaves us with Whole Foods.  In general I really can't stand this one, as they have 30 kinds of milk, none of which are just regular freaking milk, and it takes me an eternity to hunt down the essentials.  It's a great place for people with weird diets, but it's too much for me.  That said, they have a fantastic meat selection.  It's too pricy for my blood normally, but for celebration it's totally fine.

The snow crab we got was $28 for close to 2 pounds.  Which is a lot, but when you figure that Joe and I usually spend $30 a person out at dinner, and never less than $30 to order in it isn't really that bad.  Plus we seriously made it way better than my favorite seafood restaurant around the corner does.  With the rest of our food included (potatoes, corn, and pasta) our dinner was $40.  I'll take it!

On to the cooking!

The basic premise is that you boil your potatoes on the bottom of your big pot, with the water level just above the potatoes, so that your crab can steam on top of the potatoes.

Old Bay is an essential ingredient in there with your red potatoes. 

That's Old Bay sprinkled on the crab legs too.

Our corn went in a separate pot with sugared water (probably a couple tablespoons or a really big pinch worth).

The Chef!  Joe is responsible for everything but the pasta sauce in this dinner, although I did help a little.

Even Oy helped!

Joe was concerned we didn't have enough food, so we threw some pasta in yet another pot.

The sauce was a simple one- I poured some white wine and lemon juice over the noodles, and added some fresh garlic and shredded parmesan.

Then pile up everything on top!

As a funny aside, I brought my wine, butter, and lemon juice over to the table to find this:

So I took a much needed cleaning break to clear the table while Joe did the finishing touches.
What can I say, we take Father's Day seriously around here- we did some serious watercolor cards!

So as I was saying, our amazing dinner...

You really can't go wrong with putting Old Bay on anything.  My brother always puts it on his grilled corn- he's pretty damn smart.

Joe's successful crab acquisition!  For the record, we don't have nut crackers, so we just used our hands, teeth, and forks.  And it was super fun- no need for fancy tools around here!

Seriously though, this crab meat was fantastic.

Just look at that claw!  It's my favorite when you get that little wiggly piece at the end out.

And we finally worked our way down to those starches.

And that's it!  You can melt a little butter to dip your crab in, but I personally love dripping lemon juice on mine.

This little groveler didn't get any of this meal!

And now it's time to settle into that food coma...