Monday, September 28, 2009

Crab Cakes at Home

For dinner, I had homemade crab cakes with a side of fava beans and a nice Chianti Sicilian red.

I used the same recipe as last time. The recipe comes from a tiny, poorly copy-edited cookbook labeled "A Taste of Charleston, South Carolina Restaurant Recipes" that we purchased while visiting several years back.

I always follow the recipe rather loosely, especially considering they forgot to include the unit of measurement for the Worcestershire sauce. "1/4" what?!? I stick with this mangled recipe only because it is relatively unadulterated by weird fillers, and because it calls for much less (gloopy, disgusting) mayo than other recipes- 1/2 cup per pound crab. I could just make my own mayo, but it's messy and takes a ton of oil, and I'm lazy sometimes.

The crab cake mixture tasted boring this time, so I quadrupled the amount of hot sauce called for. I was using Louisiana Hot Sauce, which proved to be overpoweringly distinctive. Not bad, but next time I'll try using Marie Sharp's. I suspect its citrusy undertones would yield a less obtrusive heat.

I was also slightly disappointed with my crab. I used canned crab from Trader Joe's, which was about $8 for a pound; previously, I used canned crab from Costco for about $12/pound. It could be completely random, but there were no stray shells in my Costco crab and a TON in TJ's.

Overall, it wasn't bad, and relatively quick and easy to make. The Sicilian wine I had with it was the 2006 Fourplay- a blend of four traditional Sicilian grapes (including my much-loved Nero d'Avola). It was, predictably, a little heavy for this meal, but I had been dying to try it after I found it at the (awesome) local Italian market and couldn't wait. It's a nice, slightly tannic wine, with candied fruit undertones, but it could have a little more structure- it seemed to wilt after a few hours of air.

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