Birthday Weekend Extraveganza Pt. I

It was a long, arduous weekend. Birthdays, for most people, revolve around doing nothing for yourself, recruiting friends and relatives into indentured servitude for a period of 24 hours, and relentlessly consuming food and drink on the one day even the most disapproving, finger-wagging shrew will let you off the hook for your otherwise unacceptable over-indulgences.

Not my birthday, however. Since my wife's birthday is the 27th, and mine is the 12th, it makes [financial] sense to consolidate the birthdays into one event. That can only mean one thing: Vegas, and one hell of an expensive meal. Link Gastrologica, because next week I will review Alex, the premier French restaurant in the Wynn, and one of the Top Five rated restaurants in Vegas.

This weekend I took care of all the catering. Let's start with Saturday night.

Um, what did I make? Oh yes, very simple, very classic...something that the west coast has not been truly exposed to in its proper incarnation. As much as Culinariati repping the Westside have tried to throw down some East Coast style, they horrifically and with unapologetic exuberance...miss the mark, tragically.

Call me a snob, but if I want a crabcake done right, I will make it myself. Now there are a fair variety of legitimate variations, but they all center on the absolute necessity of Blue Crab lump meat. Not Dungeness, nor Alaskan King or the pesky stone crab with it's one claw, or even the pervastive Alaskan King substitute, snow crab. Only a blue crab can be used for a Chesapeake style crabcake.

Blue crab is ubiquitous on the East coast, its habitat stretching along the entirety of the Atlantic coastline and Gulf of Mexico. Males are preferred if you’re sitting down to a stretch picnic table with the requisite mallet, Old Bay and vinegar. Chesapeake crabs are NOT served with butter. My old joke about why we eat crabs with Old Bay and vinegar is so you can feel where you cut your hands open after fustigating and shelling three hours worth of crabs. Vinegar will pinpoint your injuries with a painfully precise burn.

But I digress, I am talking about crabcakes, not the Maryland crab feast. Here is my recipe for crabcake, yours may vary:

1 lb lump blue crab meat
1 teaspoon mayo
2-3 dashes Worchestershire sauce
1 egg
½ cup bread crumbs
1 tablespoon Old Bay

Keep in mind –I will remind you for many of the initial recipes- I measure NOTHING, so these are all estimations. You should mix until the consistency and taste are correct (you’ll know when you hit it).

Mix all the ingredients except the egg. This way you can taste it as you’re mixing. I fear no raw egg, so I taste after the egg has impregnated the mixture (my dissertation on Caeser dressing later). When you slap into patties, it should hold together loosely, not rigid from bread crumbs. Do yourself a favor and put only enough bread crumbs in so as not to desiccate or overpower the crab. It makes me want to kill a man when I get a crabcake that is 70% filler and 30% crab. It’s called a crabcake, Shecky, not a breadcrumb cake.

So anyway, put the mix in the fridge for about 20 minutes to set up. As the time approaches, start melting ½ butter on medium high heat in an 8”-10” skillet…it doesn’t have to be non-stick, there will be plenty of butter. Remove the crabcake mix from the fridge, form into semi-thin patties (1/2 thick) and sautee. You want to brown them, not burn them, so keep an eye out.
It’s like a roux. One second it’s peanut butter color, the next minute its burnt flour flecks awash in a pool of brown butter. Good for skate, bad for crabcakes. Keep the heat medium-high, please.

Sautee for about 7 minutes, or until the right shade of brown. Flip. Cook the other side for about 3.5 minutes. The only component that has too cook is the egg, everything else is already cooked (including the crab, which is cooked and pasteurized).

What should I serve with it?

Plain, or with cocktail sauce (equal parts ketsup and prepared horseradish). That is traditional. If you want to throw a wrench in the cogs, make a chipotle aioli, which is garlic mayonnaise and chipotle sauce. Serve with a lemon wedge, although the only use for the wedge is to throw at the other members of your party, since no self respecting Chesapeake consumer would put lemon juice on a crabcake.

Yeah, I’m a snob, but I have a right to be. I was born and raised in Maryland, the regional definitive and last word on blue crab and crabcake.

I will certainly devote another article on west coast crabs, since Alaskan King and Dungeness are superlative… just not in a crabcake.