Crab Cakes

If I had known how simple these were to make, I would have made them years ago. I tried this year because I had plenty of leftover crab from the seafood antipasto served on Christmas Eve. I can’t wait to serve these to company.

 
 Ingredients:

1/2lb lump crab meat 1 small bunch chives 2 small ribs celery with leaves attached 1/4C chopped parsley 1/2C fresh bread crumbs mayonnaise to bind wasabi mayonnaise to flavor flour 2 eggs panko crumbs extra virgin olive oil

Directions:
 

Add the crab, finely chopped chives and parsley, 1 egg and 2 parts mayonnaise to 1 part wasabi mayonnaise and stir. Having not measured the mayonnaise, it’s going to be guess work, but this photo may help. Start with a small amount since you can always add more if needed. It should look like the photo on the right when you’re done (click to enlarge the photo).

Finely chop the celery ribs and leaves, stir into the crab until fully blended, then add about 1/2C of bread crumbs. These crumbs were made from stale Pugliese bread from Grace Baking Company, but any French or Italian style bread should work. Look at the texture of the crumbs and don’t make do with commercially packaged very fine bread crumbs. Mix them into the crab and see how they help bind everything together, absorbing what may have looked like too much mayonnaise.

Take the 2nd egg and whip it in a small bowl. Set up another bowl of flour and a 3rd bowl filled with panko crumbs. Add 1/2” of olive oil into a frying pan and heat over a medium flame, which you can lower when you add the crab cakes, if they are browning too fast. Since filling the pan with 4 crab cakes will automatically lower the temperature, that may not be necessary. I used a large ice cream scoop to form the crab cake balls into a consistent size. Once released onto the flour, I pressed the ball into a patty, turned it over and pressed again so both sides were floured. Take the crab cake and place it into the egg to coat it completely on both sides.

 

Place the crab cake into the panko and cover with the crumbs on top, bottom and sides. When you place it into the pan, the patty should start sizzling. If not, wait until the oil is hot enough to sizzle the 1st crab cake before you start adding the others.

Place the 1st four crab cakes into the pan and brown on both sides. Drain on paper towels and reserve in a heated oven (200 degrees). When the last 4 are cooked and drained, plate all of them and add a tartar sauce to the plate. Mine was fairly simple using Trader Joe’s Tartar Sauce and doctoring it up with creme fraiche and fresh dill. You might also choose to add lemon to the plate.