Saturday, August 20, 2011

best. crabcakes. EVER!

It was our last day at 'Pier Relief' in Fairhope, Alabama... Liz and Gabe left after lunch.  We went to downtown Fairhope for lunch and found a little 'blue plate special' type of diner and I got the pork chops with greens and green beans... yummo!  Upon our return, Momma took a nap and I was out on our porch when I found this log in the water...



...Looks just like a dragon!  See it???

Anyway... Mom and I decided, instead of trying the fancy restaurant again, and spending much money on questionable food, we'd make crab cakes from the 14 crabs left over from the crab boil.

While Mom was napping, (I'm not a big napper), I decided it was the perfect time to pick the crabs for the meat of our dinner.  If you ever, EVER, questioned the price of good, premium crab meat, let me tell you what!  It took me 3 hours to pick the 14 crabs!  It's a lot. of. work!  But the rewards are unbelievable!  The resulting crab was so fresh, so unpasteurized, so unbelievably good!  Superb, in fact!

Here is the fruit of my efforts!


The claw meat is in the little red bowl, crab fingers.  In the yellow bowl is my lump crab meat, and to the right is some of my crab shells.  We netted about 3 cups of crab meat bliss!  You'll notice a touch of 'the recipe' is in the top of the picture.  I had to finish the crab pickin' after Momma got up and we were having a little toast for sunset.

Here are views of our last sunset in Fairhope, AL.  Beautiful, and on the water!




Beautiful!  I hope we can go back!




Back to my crab cake makin...  I finely chopped about 1/3 cup of each: sweet onion, red bell pepper, and celery, mixed that in a bowl with the crab, gently, and added some old bay seasoning.  To that I added two eggs, and a scant 1/2 cup of bread crumbs made from Melba crackers (I think that's what they were).  I very gently mixed these with my hands and made them into small balls (bigger than a ping pong ball, smaller than a tennis ball).  I arranged the balls on a cookie sheet with wax paper and put them in the freezer for a while to firm up, cause they were tender and loose... I didn't want them to fall apart and I also didn't want a lot of filler in them.  This is all for at least 3 cups of crab.

Here they are resting in the freezer.



Once they were very firm (almost frozen), I brushed an egg white wash on them and rolled em in panko breadcrumbs and pan fried them in veggie oil, just a smidge.

Here is the assembly line...


Here I am cooking...


So, meanwhile, Momma makes a MEAN salad.  We're dedicated mean salad girls.  We can make a mean salad, and keep your bottled salad dressing away from our salads!  And she makes a spicy mayo sauce for the crab cakes.

We plated our salad and crab cakes, Mom drizzled some sauce atop the crab cakes, and we had dinner with a nice Pino Gris!

Here is our dinner table!




OUTSTANDING!!!

It literally was the best dinner of the vacation, and as Momma declared, the best crab cakes she'd ever had!  (me too for that matter!!!!)

The crab was so fresh and clean, light on the breading, and perfect with the panko crust, tender inside, and tasty sauce!  Delish!

With our trip coming to a close... we slept like babies until the thunderstorms came in at 3am, Miss Lucky got kicked out of Mom's bed and came to have her anxiety attack in my room with me, all night long!  We packed up with the rain the next morning, and drove to New Orleans for me to fly home that afternoon.

What a wonderful trip I had!  Thanks MOMMA!

School starts with kiddos tomorrow... I'm excited to see what the new school year brings!

Thanks for reading... If you're reading this, YOU ROCK!

-P

1 comment:

  1. That sounds/looks FAN-tizzliy-tastic!!!! MMM-mm, that will be the lure for next time I guess. Love yoU! & you Rock! glad that I rock, too. ;)

    ReplyDelete