Tom Douglas - I Love Crab Cakes!: 50 Recipes for an American Classic

I LOVE
CRAB CAKES!

50 Recipes for an American Classic

TOM DOUGLAS

with Shelley Lance

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROBIN LAYTON

To my mom, Mary Douglas, who, when asked
where she goes for her favorite crab cakes, responded,
Right in my kitchen, of course.

Where do you get the best crab cakes? Ask that question to a hundred people and youre likely to get a hundred different answers. Some New Yorkers swear by Pearl Oyster Bar in the West Village, while Marylanders would argue till the crabs come home about G&M, Timbuktu, or the Robert Morris Inn. Washington, D.C., Roanoke, Philly, and certainly every town on the Eastern Shore would be happy to join in the fray.

There are websites devoted to the art of the crab cake. Sweet creamy textures married to lumpfin, backfin, or body meat. Restaurants can be made or broken on their crab cake reviews. The rewards for the positive are lines out the door. Beware the poor fellow who gets dinged for using too much filler, a common reference to too many crumbs in your cake, for he shall hang his head in shame. When I asked my mom, who still lives in Newark, Delaware (thirty minutes north of Chesapeake Bay), where she goes for her favorite crab cake, her response was swift and confident, My kitchen!

Every crab cake is a bit unique depending on area or creed. Are you a bread man or saltine fan, or no crumbs at all? Does deep-frying float your boat or a delicate panfry in whole sweet butter? Do you broil your crab cake so it doesnt fall apart? Do you like your crab cakes plattered with crispy fries and sweet-and-sour slaw? Or slapped on a plump bun with chunky dill pickle tartar sauce? Maybe you are an Old Bay traditionalist from Baltimore. Until I was nineteen years old I never ate a crab that had not been steamed with Old Bay. Since then Ive come to crave other flavorings, such as herbes de Provence or Chinese black bean sauce.

When I moved to Seattle in 1977 from crab cake country, the mid-Atlantic home of the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays, it never occurred to me that in the Emerald City I wouldnt be able to find a crab cake. After all, Seattle is right on Puget Sound, the land of Dungeness crab, a sweet, briny, and meaty 3- to 4-pound beautiful monster of the Pacific Ocean. This is a city where you can walk out on the tide flats and literally grab a Dungie, and I couldnt find onedamn crab cake! This was unfathomable to me, having gorged on crab cakes from Atlantic City to Virginia Beach. Crab shacks and crab cakes reign supreme from the most run-down boardwalks to the mightiest boardrooms.

Well, I fixed that! And whats moreI became a little famous for it. Stacks of gleaming crabs, cooked at sea and iced at every market or better yet, snappy Dungeness clinging to each other in saltwater live tanks, were all the inspiration I needed. With a menu full of exotic dishes like kasuzuke black cod with seaweed salad, and red chili pasta with salsa and spot prawns, it turned out my fresh Dungeness crab cakes, inspired by my stint at the Hotel du Pont in Wilmington, Delaware, seven years earlier, were hands down the big hit.

Twenty years later, crab cakes have become a national phenomenon. When I sent out a request to my chef buddies around the country for either a regional favorite or their personal favorite crab cake recipe, no one responded with a Sorry, I dont make crab cakes. In fact, everyone from Jacques Ppin in Connecticut and Emeril Lagasse in New Orleans to Nancy Silverton in L.A. and Mark Bittman in N.Y.C, had a favorite recipe or style.

I am enamored with the variety and originality of our assembled crab cake recipes. Perfect combinations like Chris Schlesingers Tidewater Cakes, spiked with southern Smithfield ham bits, taste like a boardinghouse staple. The tempura-seaweed crab cakes, deep-fried into sea forms, can easily be confused with creatures youd see in the tanks at the Seattle Aquarium.

Have fun with this book. Break out now and then! You traditionalists will be thrilled with our Chesapeake Bay Classic, but dont be afraid to try the avant-garde Crab and Scallop Cakes Steamed in Banana Leaves or Tomato Aspic Crab Cakes, culled from memories of Grandma Fogartys kitchen. Yes, its old-fashioned, but also delicious.

Embrace this book for what it isa look at a true American classicthe crab cake.

I Love Crab Cakes! features crabs from all over North America. For all of the recipes, blue crab, Phillips brand pasteurized crab, and Dungeness crab are interchangeable. Jonah crab or Peekytoe also work well. King crab, while you can chop and use it, will give a different texture.

I like the body, leg, and claw meat of the Dungeness crab equally. Jumbo lump and backfin of the blue crab are the most sought after and make the best-textured crab cakes. I have found that the Phillips brand pasteurized crabmeat from Southeast Asia is an okay substitute, but fresh is always best.

Drain the crabmeat in a sieve. Dungeness and King tend to be quite wet. Gently squeeze the crabmeat with your hands to remove excess liquid, and at the same time feel for any bits of cartilage or shell and remove them. Theres a fine balance between wet crab and dry, stringy crab, and your challenge is to remove moisture without drying out the crab too much.

Mix gently. Crabmeat is graded and priced on the size of the lumps, with lump meat often being double the price of body meat. Fold the crabmeat and the dressing together with a rubber spatula as if youre folding whipped cream into a mousse.

Once shaped, most crab cakes will be easier to handle if you chill them awhile. You canleave them right in the pan of crumbs for at least 30 minutes or for several hours or even overnight. The crab cakes will continue to soak up more crumbs if you leave them sitting in a pan of crumbs for a long time, so only do this if you like a heavier crumb. Alternatively, you can refrigerate the crab mixture first, then scoop and crumb the cakes right before you plan to cook them.

A 2-ounce ice cream scoop is perfect for shaping a classic 2- to 3-ounce cake. Buy a scoop with a release lever. Lightly pack the scoop with the heel of your hand and release the cake directly into the pan of bread crumbs. Press the crumbs around the cake while youre shaping it into a disk.

You can turn the cakes on both sides in the crumbs, or if the cakes are soft or fragile, it may be easiest to set them in the pan and sprinkle crumbs or flour over the top. Each recipe includes an excess quantity of bread crumbs or flour for easy dredging. You can refrigerate the crab cakes right in the pan of bread crumbs, but if a crab cake recipe calls for dredging just in flour, dont dredge until youre ready to cook. Otherwise, a flour-dredged crab cake will absorb all the flour while its in the refrigerator.

The easiest way to tell if a crab cake is cooked is with an instant-read thermometer. Insert the thermometer into the center of the cake and if the temperature is 155F, the crab cake is fully cooked.