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Crab Cakes with Rémoulade Sauce

From time to time, canned lump crabmeat is on sale and I never pass it up. True, the canned stuff is pasteurized and the fresh is more delicate in flavor, but convenience and price often rule. Besides, if you buy the best grade, labeled lump, jumbo or backfin and avoid all others, you will have a great product that will hold well in the fridge until you're ready to open the can and make something of it. Years ago, most roadside cafes had fried crab cakes on the menu. The stuff is so expensive now that only fine dining restaurants prepare fresh crabmeat cakes in portion sizes suitable for the dinner menu. The good news is that they are easy to prepare and can be made at home at great savings.

The key to making good crab cakes is to prepare a "binder" that serves to hold the crab meat together in a patty while imparting a little seasoning and nothing else. The "cake" in crab cake refers to shape only. The binder mix should not be cake-like or heavy, lest the crabmeat flavor gets lost and the whole mess gets tough. The roadside cafe chef, loaded the crabmeat with lots of bread crumbs to stretch the crabmeat and to insure that the patties held together while his brother Earl, the line cook, tossed them about in the frying pan for fifteen minutes. There are better ways.

I have three crab cake recipes in my Chef's Compendium--one from school that uses a scallop mousse as a binder, one from a visiting chef at school that uses mayo and Old Bay seasoning (which I tired of 10 years ago), and the third, presented here, a combination of my best results over the years. I use "ring molds" to apportion and shape the crab cakes and then hold them in the fridge for an hour or more to help set the egg in the binder.

Crab Cakes
See abbreviations if needed
Yield: 6 crab cakes (3 dinner servings

l lb lump crabmeat, drained

1 egg, whisked

1T Dijon mustard

4 dashes of mild hot sauce, like Tennessee Sunshine (not Tabasco)

1t Worchester Sauce

2T chopped fresh parsley

S/P TT

5-6T "Panko" (Japanese-style bread crumbs) preferred, or fresh bread crumbs

1/4C Wondra flour or AP flour, if sautéing (Wondra browns better)

2T butter, if sautéing

1. In a SSB, whisk together all the ingredients except the bread crumbs, flour and butter
2. Add the crabmeat and gently fold it into the binding mixture
3. Add the bread crumbs and gently fold again
4. Hand shape into six even-weight patties, or pack tightly into six 60 mm ring molds
5. Chill in the fridge for an hour
6. To sauté:

Dust cakes with flour while still in the molds

Carefully remove the molds

Sauté in butter, turning once, about 5 minutes a side

7. To bake:

Do not flour

Carefully remove the molds

Place cakes on an oiled baking sheet pan

Bake at 400F for about 10 minutes

8. Dust with a little red spicy powder, of choice
9. Serve with a mayo-based sauce such as Tartar Sauce, Wasabi Mayo, Red Pepper Mayo or Rémoulade Sauce
NOTE: This recipe works well with smoked salmon. Delete the parsley and add 2 teaspoons cream style horseradish and 4 to 6 grinds of freshly ground Telecherry peppercorn.

Rémoulade Sauce
Mayonnaise is very popular (Hellmann's and Trader Joe's are very good US brands). However, sauces based on mayo are heavy and loaded with calories and fat. Worse still, when served on the side, diners tend to use a lot of it. Sour cream has 1/3 the calories of mayo and is lighter on the palette, so when serving this sauce on the side, I make it about 4 parts mayo and 3 parts sour cream. Too much sour cream and it gets runny.

See abbreviations if needed
Yield: 8 servings

1/2C mayonnaise

3oz sour cream

1T Dijon mustard

2t capers, drained and chopped

2 cornichon (or small gherkin) pickles, very finely diced

1T fresh parsley, chopped

1T fresh tarragon

1t anchovy paste

pepper TT

No salt (anchovy paste is loaded with it)

juice of 1/2 small lemon, not too much, taste and add

1. Mix all together, cover and refrigerate
2. Serve at room temperature as a side for crab cakes or other fish
Notes:
A nicer and smoother sauce can be made more quickly using a stick blender.
Hold the cornichons , blend the rest of the ingredients and then add them.

Our fish monger, Gary at American Seafood recently had beautiful salmon filets with luminous silver skin and a fresh inviting smell. Had to have it. I grilled it using only EVOO and salt and pepper. For a sauce, I thought of making this Rémoulade but the mustard and anchovy paste in it didn't sound good. So, I substituted 2 teaspoons of horse radish for the mustard and deleted the anchovy paste. It worked. We thought it was quite complimentary.