Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Dungeness Crab Cakes

Most of our guests loved our Dungeness crab cakes, and they could never understand why we didn’t enter the crab cake contest in the annual Crab Festival.  One of the things that made our crab cakes so good was the effort (aka labor) that went into them.  It took three quarters of an hour of labor to make a single batch, which was only six servings.  And much of that labor was quite tedious.

To start, we made a jalapeno mustard.  This was used in the mayonnaise which helped bind the crab, and it was also used as a garnish on top of each crab cake.  The nice thing about the mustard, of course, was that it had a good shelf life, so we could produce it in fairly large quantities.  Not so the other ingredients--the veggies and, particularly, the crab.

The dish was “Spicy Dungeness Crab Cakes.”  The spiciness derived not only from the mustard, but finely chopped fresh jalapenos, along with red bell pepper and yellow onion in the crab mixture.  These had to be chopped by hand, very very fine...almost to a puree.  A food processor wouldn’t do the trick--you’d end up with a watery mess, with lots of shredded skin from the red bells and jalapenos.

We always got a kick out of newbies in the kitchen who were given the task of chopping the “crab veg,” as we called it.  After a while they’d stop and ask “Is this good enough?”  The response was usually “Another ten minutes...”  This might happen two or three times before the crag veg got to its desired state.

Once that was done, we had to make the mayonnaise by hand.  The crab veg was added to the previously-picked-over crab meat, followed by seasoning, followed by bread crumbs, followed by the mayonnaise.

When crab season was in high gear, it was common to have to make our crab cakes daily.

This year, we’ll be entering the competition at the Crab Festival for the first time in its fifteen-year history.  It’s for a cause we’ve liked to support over the years, from before the Rendezvous closed--Mendocino Coast Clinics.  Thanks to a pair of hard working, helping hands from Tamara Folley, who used to work in the kitchen with me, the task has been made significantly easier.  Still, this is likely to be a one shot deal.