Light Lunch: Crab Cakes, but not.
I had a can of lump crab meat sitting in the fridge for a while and while I tried my hardest to convince Liana that making straight up crab cakes wouldn’t be THAT bad for you (egg’d, flour’d, panko’d and fried)… she wasn’t having it. It’s hard swaying her when she has so much conviction! LOL. Midnight snaks are hard like that. LOL. So, to somehow get that same crunchy texture and enhance that creamy crab love… I had to improvise (YAY).
I decided to make corn pancakes that I’ve been making these past few weeks to provide a clean and sweet base and a light & spicy crab salad to add to the creamy texture. I can’t remember where I got the recipe for the corn pancakes (it was found in an old grid notebook from culinary skool, but the crab salad recipe is pretty run o’ the mill, kaies? kaies. Here we go!
Crab Salad
Ingredients
2 cups lump crab meat, picked through for shells
1/4 cup celery, finely chopped
1/4 cup carrot, finely chopped
1/4 cup red onions, finely chopped
2 ripe avocados, coarsley chopped
3 tbsp mayonaise
Juice from 1 lemon
fresh dill
Fabrication:
Combine all ingredients together and gently fold. For a spicier tastes, add 2 tbsp of Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasoning.
Corn Pancakes
Ingredients:
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup AP flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp Kosher salt
1/2 + 2 tbsp cup milk
2 tbsp honey
1 egg
Fabrication:
Mix dry ingredients and wet ingredients in separate bowls. Slowly stir dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just combined. Preheat a non-stick pan over medium high heat and melt 1/2 tsp of butter to grease the pan. Add 1/4 cup of batter for large pancakes and flip when bubbles subside on the edges. Keep warm by covering them with a damp kitchen towel in a 200 degree oven until service.
What you get is a spicy crab salad with cool and creamy avocado on top of a warm and “crunchy on the outside and moist on the inside” corn cake. If I had one around, I’d puree a roasted red pepper with some oil to drizzle around the sides for a little color. It’s a great light lunch with a glass of white (I can’t remember which one the waitress brought us @ Bizarro – but that’s for another post) or first course because it teases your palette into wanting more… OR a midnight snack! Hee hee.
YAY Crab… cakes? 
~Spec
