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.

Argentine Red Shrimp Salad

One of my favorite Trader Joe’s seafood items is red shrimp from Argentina. It has a more elegant flavor than regular prawns, almost a blend between lobster and shrimp. I’ve used them several different ways, but for the holidays I tried these two preparations.

Ingredients:

First Option: 6 oz red shrimp extra virgin olive oil 4 green onions 2 medium celery ribs chopped cilantro mayonnaise to bind wasabi mayonnaise to taste black sesame crackers black sesame seeds or wasabi caviar Second Option: red pickled ginger round won ton olive oil

Directions:
 

Finely chop the green onions, then divide the celery into 4 pieces lengthwise and finely chop that. Add chopped cilantro. I didn’t measure these but I think about 1/3C onions, 1/2C celery and 2T cilantro would be about right.

Sautee the shrimp in a little bit of extra virgin olive oil until cooked. Dice the shrimp and add to the bowl, then add enough mayonnaise to bind the shrimp salad, just enough to blend the ingredients. Add enough wasabi mayonnaise or powder to add a very faint heat. Blend.

It should look something like this in texture. You can find the won ton cup recipe under Hors D’oeuvres, but it’s really simple to make. Just lightly rub olive oil on both sides of a won ton and press into a mini muffin tin, bake at 375 for about 5 minutes. When they start turning a light tan, they’re ready.

To finish, fill the won ton cup with the shrimp salad and top with chopped red pickled ginger. A pink pickled ginger slice would be a good alternative. In this 2nd photo I added some leftover wasabi caviar from another recipe being made on the same night.

Crab and Shrimp Pasta

Leftovers ingredients have been a great source of inspiration to me, when it comes to developing recipes. After Christmas Eve, we had a pound of crab and half a pound or more of cooked shrimp, so for Christmas dinner, which I had not preplanned, we sat down to this pasta for a simple meal.

Ingredients:

1lb penne rigate pasta 4T fruity olive oil 1-2T sweet butter 3 anchovy filets 1T Tutto Calabria Hot pepper Sauce     (or 1t hot red pepper flakes) 3 large cloves of garlic chopped parsley 8oz crab meat 1C large cooked shrimp

Directions:

It’s well established that we always have anchovies and Tutto Calabria Hot Pepper Sauce in the pantry and they along with olive oil and butter make a good start for a pasta sauce. But before starting the sauce, get a pot of water boiling and add the pasta, because this sauce takes less time to cook than the pasta will.

After the pasta is on, place the oil, butter, anchovies, and pepper into a large pan over medium heat until the anchovies have disintegrated. Then add the minced garlic and saute it until the fragrance increases. Add the crab and saute until it is warmed.

If this were a perfect world, the  shrimp would have been raw and they would have been added before the crab, but since they were cooked, I added them last so they wouldn’t turn to rubber. After they are heated, add the drained pasta heat together for a minute or two, and then take off the heat to add the chopped parsley. Now plate the pasta and serve. Traditionally I would not serve cheese with this, but a small amount of Romano actually tasted good with this pasta, because it added more salt. Next time I’ll just use more anchovies.

Asian Fried Mussel Variations

Ingredients for Fried Mussels:

green lipped mussels 1/4C flour sake 1 fat clove micro plane grated garlic 1t micro plane grated fresh ginger 2t toasted sesame oil 1T chopped cilantro panko crumbs extra virgin olive oil Ingredients for Garnishes: lemon creme fraiche wasabi caviar pickled ginger mayonnaise squid ink

Directions:
 

Here we have a clear case in which Nana would say, “Do what I say and not what I do.” I made this twice in a 2 day period and when I made it the 2nd time, I realized we had no more fresh ginger, so I improvised and used the red pickle ginger. Place the flour in a small bowl and mix in enough sake to make a thick heavy cream consistency. Add the garlic and ginger, then the finely chopped cilantro and mix. this cilantro could have been chopped more. I may try pureeing it in the future.

Start setting up your flour and panko bowls near a frying pan with 1/2” of olive oil over medium heat. Dredge the first batch of mussels in flour. Add the sesame oil to the batter that may have started thickening by this time. Use enough to thin it back to the heavy cream consistency.

   

Dip the floured mussels into the batter, then dredge them in the panko. You may put them directly into the frying pan or set aside until you have enough mussels to fill the frying pan. The only advantage in setting them aside is that they will all be cooked at approximately the same time.

Fry over a medium heat and turn when they show signs of browning. These mussels were precooked and shelled, so they need little actual cooking. The aim is to brown the exterior and warm the interior of each mussel. Drain them on paper towels and if you have more to cook, place the finished mussels in a warm oven at 200 degrees.

Each of these mussels is topped with mayonnaise combined with squid ink. It has a hint of “the sea” in it’s taste, just a little brine flavor which you can also get with a gray, moist sea salt. The mussel in the top left photo is garnished with red, pickled ginger. In the top right photo, grated lemon peel was used as the garnish, and in this lower photo you can see the wasabi flavored caviar. Since I could only find the caviar in one shop in a quantity of 4 ounces, it was imperative to use as much as possible, since it doesn’t keep long.

Since there also was a glut of creme fraiche  on hand, I tried that with the wasabi caviar and have to admit, it had the best look and brightest flavor. Even though I prefer the fresh ginger, the cilantro and red  ginger give this a great look for the Christmas holidays.

Fried Seafood Appetizers

This is perhaps the only time I’ll talk about recipes without offering step by step photos, or exact proportions of ingredients. I was so rushed to get these made and onto the table that I completely forgot to take the necessary photographs. It is more of a record for future use than anything else; a basis for future recipes.

The Dore Style Fried Oyster (lower left) has already been listed here and I’ve done variations of the Asian Style Fried Mussel (upper left), but will discuss more ideas that were put together for this meal. That leaves the small Octopus, the Oyster Stuffing Fried Won Ton, and the Smoked Salmon Won Ton Cup which is exactly like my Smoked Salmon/Salmon Butter Phyllo Cups except for the cup.

Ingredients:

Sesame marinated mini octopi flour for dredging extra virgin olive oil for frying sea salt or flakes salt

Directions:

This was a no brainer. I saw these precooked and sesame sprinkled octopi at 99 Ranch Market where I went to purchase the pre shelled and pre cooked green lipped mussels. I couldn’t resist putting one on each plate that I was serving to guests, because they were so darned cute. Being willing to try one myself was an essential part of the decision making process. All I did was dredge in flour and quickly fry in hot olive oil. They were delicious and even the non squid eaters were willing to give them a try. I hope to find them again.

Ingredients:

round won ton skins 2 oysters (buy in a jar and reserve liquid) 1/2  celery stalk 1 whole green onion  6 finely diced water chestnuts 1/2C Pepperidge Farm herb stuffing olive oil for frying

Directions:

Microwave the oysters to cook them (1 minute on medium high should do it) and then chop. Finely dice the celery, water chestnuts and green onion, then saute with a bit of the olive oil. Add the finely chopped oysters, stir and add the stuffing mix. After stirring, add enough of the reserved oyster juice to moisten. Place a small spoonful in the center of the won ton, spread some water along the edges of the won ton and fold in half, forcefully pressing the edges together. Deep fry until golden brown, then drain on a paper towel. These are good served with a Thai sweet chili sauce.

If you look back in the Hors D’oeuvres file you will see both a recipe for the won ton cups under “Fig’s Wonton Cup” and the salmon butter under “Smoked Salmon/Salmon Butter Phyllo Cups”. Replace the phyllo cup with the won ton cup and you have the means to make this appetizer.

The Asian Style Fried Mussels can be versatile with a variety of toppings. Since I happen to have photos of the process and several of the finished variations, I’m writing a separate recipe for them.

Dore Fried Oysters

When I needed a few oysters to make an oyster dressing, it occurred to me that there were enough oysters leftover for the number of guests at Christmas Eve dinner, so remembering I had seen this style of oyster made at Marin Joe’s, I decided to try them with my own spin.

Ingredients:

1 jar shucked oysters flour for dredging 1 egg garlic powder olive oil for frying squid aioli or creme fraiche wasabi flavored caviar

Directions:

If you can find a small packet of squid ink, then you’ll be able to mix it with mayonnaise to create the black background for the wasabi caviar. If not, creme fraiche is also a good choice.

The frying is so easy, I forgot to take photos of each stage, so the verbal description will have to do. Remove the oysters from the jar and drain, then dredge in flour, dip in the whipped egg and fry in the olive oil over a medium heat. Drain on a paper towel and plate. Place a dab of the aioli or creme fraiche on top and spoon on the caviar.