Crabby Challenge

    Pun intended, there.  These crab cakes put me in a frustrated mood at first.  I followed a recipe from Cooking Light's April issue entitled Crab Cakes with Spicy Remoulade.  The recipe was part of a special "40 Fast and Easy Meals" feature, which is one of my favorite parts of the magazine.  And after a weekend of eating like crap (tailgate food, Mexican twice in one day, baked ham), we wanted to opt for two lighter/meatless meals this week.  However "fast" this recipe was, it definitely wasn't easy.

     That is, until I employed a little trick I learned from one of the restaurants I used to work in.  I should probably back up a bit and tell you that a few years ago, I attempted to make shrimp cakes.  I worked at a Southwestern restaurant when I first moved to Milwaukee and they had the tastiest appetizers--or "tapas," as we called them.  Tapas were the best part of the menu: shrimp cake sliders, seared scallops, grilled shrimp, fresh-made guac & salsa...the list went on.  It's definitely a penchant of mine to attempt to remake my favorite restaurant food at home.  I'm not usually good at it; the shrimp cakes were a perfect example.  Generally when you make "cakes" or meatballs of any kind, you use an egg to sort of glue things together.  Not only did I accidentally omit the egg, I forgot to pop the mixture in the fridge so that it'd be easier to mold.  That night's feasting ended in sauteed shrimp crumbles.

     There was one thing I'd seen the cooks doing, however,  and it's the trick I'm going to strongly advise you to employ.  Take any jar lid (even your mayo lid would work here), place a sheet of plastic wrap inside it, and then pack your crab cake mixture in it.  This compacts your mixture into a tightly, evenly-formed patty that will not only hold together, but will cook evenly as well.  The plastic wrap ensures that nothing gets stuck inside the lid.  It'll look something like this:
 

   
     However, before I remembered this trick, I spent about 5 minutes trying to keep the first patty (and subsequently, my spirits) from crumbling and falling apart--and I even remembered the egg this time.  So, fear not, you lovers of the homemade crab cake!  I urge you to give this a shot.  Here's more aptly-helpful photographic evidence:

Be sure to flip it upside down in order to remove your cake.

 

And rather than dredge in panko, I just held each patty and gave each side a little dusting, pressing the crumbs in to finish.

Dust away.

As you can see, even with this little trick, it's not a perfect enterprise.

This was also my first experience with homemade remoulade!  You won't be surprised to hear that I forgot to add the ground red pepper.  But for those of you with milder palates, rest assured, it's still tasty without!

Pre-fry.

Post-fry.  Not bad, eh?

 

Rounds out a pretty delicious meal!  Serving size is two cakes--but that's a little too small of a meal for me.  Three cakes was still less than 500 calories.  Also, because multi-tasking in the kitchen isn't my best modus operandi, I just made up a "salad" of arugula, red onion, s&p, and lemon juice, then garnished with some fresh basil from my cheater garden.