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.

Leftovers

Mmmm, skate.


Skate, as I learned this afternoon, is a stingray-like creature. I bought some yesterday at the H-Mart because it was a nice compromise between the boring fish (tilapia) and the weird/scary seafood (snails, monkfish heads, LIVE tilapia), and I remembered my Bouchon cookbook has a few skate recipes in it.

This afternoon, went to cook it, only to be overwhelmed by ammonia. Considerable internet research allowed me to conclude that it (*probably*) won't kill me, and that soaking it in lemon for an hour will help.

In the meantime, a little food blogging about things Gen ate in the recent past:

[EDIT: skate=fail. It cooked beautifully, and I was so excited to try it. I'd sauteed some oyster mushrooms in butter rather than follow Keller's recipe, and it made a nice sauce. I lifted the first forkful of fishy goodness, and was (again) overcome by the smell of ammonia I thought I'd eradicated. It was too strong for even me to try. Lunch was sauteed mushrooms, boo.]


Crab.

This is the leftovers of a fabulous meal I made from scratch on Sunday. Homemade crabcakes on arugula with some goat cheese. I also made lemon-goat cheese biscuits (not pictured) as an adaptation of the biscuit recipe from my new cookbook, Beard on Bread. They froze really well.

Also in recent eating news:

Dolmades

Being the weirdo I am, I had this for breakfast a few days ago. Vegetarian dolmades from Phoenecia, with arugula and a poached egg. Like most normal people, I suck at poaching eggs. I was excited about the concept, dreaming of velvety poached eggs from brunches past, only to fail, again. I followed the procedure described in my circa-1960s Joy of Cooking, but got only watery egg drop soup. I tried again, with slightly better results, but had to fish slippery egg chunks out of the pot for my salad.

Finally, Mai's. I was really annoyed with their refusal to let me try anything interesting on the menu the last time I went, so it had been months since we'd visited. They did it again. I almost walked out when the waiter refused to let me order the salty limeade I wanted. We argued for several minutes, and he finally relented. I LOVED it- it tasted like lemon-lime Gatorade, or maybe Mountain Dew, but made with real juices. Sooo good after a hot day in the sun. After seeing me enjoy it, our waiter didn't even blink when I ordered the jellyfish salad.


It was the PERFECT summer food. I'd been craving jellyfish for weeks (I'm not kidding- it's actually delicious), and it was very different from the Chinese-style jellyfish salad I was used to, but it was awesome. It had jellyfish, tons of crunchy veggies, peanuts, spicy sauce, and fresh fried shrimp crackers. So now I actually like Mai's. But I wonder how much more business they would get if they would let their waiters let customers be adventurous without a fight.

Butter Makes Everything Better

For dinner, I had crab meat with purple sticky rice, rosemary sourdough bread, and a glass of viognier(!!!).

Steamed and pre-packaged crab meat is awesome. Not as expensive as fresh fish, but very tasty covered in butter, and super-easy to heat up. It smelled slightly funky, but tasted great. Chalk it up to the sodium benzoate preservative, at least until I wake up vomiting in the middle of the night...

My love affair with the rice cooker continues, but I wanted something a little healthier than refined basmati rice. Whole Foods had a few interesting varieties- Himalayan red rice, Canadian wild rice (pricey!), and my final choice, the aforementioned purple sticky rice. I think it's supposed to be used in Thai desserts or something, but it was nice by itself, covered with some butter and salt. The texture was not as horrifically grainy as brown rice, but nicely chewy and fragrant. Complimented with some toasted rosemary sourdough with butter, the meal was very easy and yummy.

To make dinner even better, I actually found a reasonably priced vionier! It is my favorite summery wine, after vinho verdes, and always amazing with seafood. This one was under $10, from Loredona Vineyards in California. It's pretty nicely balanced, although I'd like it better a bit leaner and drier. The flavors reminded me of Ironstone Vineyard's Symphony, an amazing wine in its own right (symphony being a grape variety developed in mid-century California), although Symphony is very, very sweet.