This crab cake turned out wonderful.  I went on the cheap and used an imitation crab blend of fish and crab claw meat – a little better than normal imitation crab.  I think this could be even better with real crab and better quality raw shrimp.  The original recipe from epicurious is for a spicy crab cake, and many reviews said the saffron taste gets lost.  Since I omitted the adobo sauce, you can really get a sense of the saffron.   The crab cake recipe produced 9 big cakes, we gobbled up 4 for breakfast and I think the rest will be going into crabcake sliders later with perhaps a chipotle sauce.  I am also very embarrassed to say that I am totally out of cayenne pepper.  I had to substitute a cajun spice mix and it ended up kind of ugly. :(  Sean said it was more cakey than crabby – which means I should use 1/3 of the shrimp and crab to make the puree instead of 1/2.  I however thought it was a good ratio, I like my crab cakes more cakey and he likes his crumbly and falling apart.  Since I’m making these, my taste always wins.  :)

Evie’s Saffron infused Shrimp and Crab Cake Benedict
Heavily adapted fromthis and this

Ingredients:

For crab cakes: (this makes 9 1/2 cup patties)

• 1/4 teaspoon crumbled saffron threads
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 cup diced (1/8-inch) onion
• 1/4 cup diced (1/8-inch) carrot
• 1/4 cup diced (1/8-inch) celery
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 stick butter
• 1/3 cup milk
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 3/4 lb cooked shrimp, shelled
• 3/4 lb crab meat
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped onions
• 1 1/2 teaspoons finely chopped garlic
• 1 cup panko (Japanese bread crumbs)

For Hollandaise Sauce: (approx 1 cup)

• 2 large egg yolks
• 2 teaspoons vinegar
• 2 tablespoons creme fraîche
• Salt, cayenne pepper
• 1 stick of butter
• 2 drops lemon juice

For poached eggs:

• 4 super fresh brown eggs

Directions:

Make crab cakes:

1. Sprinkle saffron into water in a 1-quart heavy saucepan and boil over moderately high heat until liquid is reduced to 1 tablespoon, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and transfer to a small bowl, then cool completely.
2. Heat oil (1 tablespoon) in a 10-inch heavy skillet over moderate heat until hot but not smoking, then cook onion, carrot, and celery, stirring occasionally, until pale golden, about 8 minutes. Transfer to a plate to cool.
3. Put oven rack in the middle of oven and preheat oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and spray with oil.
4. Whisk together 1 egg, melted butter, milk, 1/8 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper.
5. Pat shrimp dry and transfer half of shrimp to clean food processor, add half of the crab, then add saffron reduction, minced onions, garlic, and 1/2 cup panko. Purée until smooth, then, with motor running, add egg mixture in a slow stream, blending until just incorporated.
6. Chop remaining shrimp very coarsely (about 1/3-inch pieces) and stir together with remaining 1/2 cup panko, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, and carrot mixture. Lightly beat remaining egg and stir into shrimp/crab and vegetable mixture along with shrimp/crab purée, add the remaining coarsely chopped crab and mix.
7. Loosely fill a 1/2-cup measure with crab mixture and drop onto a lined baking sheet. Make about 8 more cakes in same manner, dropping onto baking sheets about 1 inch apart. Flatten tops gently and bake, move the rack to the top 1/3 of the oven for the last 5 minutes until tops are lightly browned, about 20 minutes total.

Make Hollandaise and poached eggs:

1. While the crab cakes are baking, start the hollandaise and poached egg.  I will omit the poaching directions, hopefully you can figure that part out.
2. Put egg yolks in glass heatproof bowl (or top of double boiler) and beat in the vinegar and creme fraîche. Season with salt and a little cayenne.
3. Stand bowl in pan of hot water (or top of double boiler over hot water) over a slow fire and beat with a small wire whisk until the mixture is as thick as heavy cream. It is important that the water should not boil; add cold water if it gets too hot.
4. Beat in the butter, piece by piece, adding another piece only when the previous one has been absorbed. When all the butter is absorbed, add lemon juice.

Assemble the Deliciousness:

Take a crab cake and put it on a plate.  Top with a poached egg.  Use a saucing spoon, drizzle about 2 tablespoon of hollandaise on top.  Sprinkle with a little cayenne, and top with a sprig of dill.

And the obligatory egg porn shot!

]]> http://www.evie.org/recipes/crab-cake-benedict-no-world-of-warcraft-involved/feed/ 8 http://www.evie.org/recipes/hot-pot-cookery/ http://www.evie.org/recipes/hot-pot-cookery/#comments Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:05:32 +0000 Evie http://www.evie.org/?p=546 If you are Asian, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  The big bowl of steaming liquid, little wire mesh spoons to cook your food with, eating a bunch of vegetables at the end and die to the amount of spices.  I wish I had some better pictures from the restaurant, but I don’t.  This post however, is not about hot pot, not really.  It’s about what to do with all that leftover you got because the hot pot is intended to feed 4, and you went there with 2 because you just had to have it.

We came home with a metric ton of raw fish, beef, chicken, pork meatballs, fried tofu, egg noodles, and spinach.  It was like going to the grocery store.  I suppose I could have had them pack up the hot pot broth, and used a bit of it in this ramen, but I didn’t think that far ahead.  You can of course make this ramen without having hot pot the night before, but that’s just not as fun now is it?

Evie’s Ramen #154

Ingredients:

• 5 slices of beef
• 5 slices of chicken
• 5 slices of fish
• 5 shrimp, cleaned and deveined
• 2 pork balls
• 2 pieces of fried tofu
• 1 cup cooked thin egg noodles
• 1/2 cup spinach
• 2 cups beef broth
• 1/2 tablespoon veal demi glace
• salt to taste

Directions:

1. Heat a pot of water over your stove for boiling the protein.
2. In a second pot, bring the beef broth to a boil and add the veal demi glace for extra flavoring.  Add the pork balls and let boil for about 2 minutes.  Then add the egg noodles and spinach and boil for an additional 3 minutes.
3. In the first pot of water, boil the beef, chicken, fish, and shrimp for 3 minutes.  Do this in a separate pot because we don’t want the nasties from boiling meat and fish to be in the ramen.  Turn off the heat and skim off the nasties from the top and discard.
4. In a large bowl, add the broth and noodle mixture.  Top with the drained protein.  Serve and enjoy!

After making this, believe it or not, I still had a bunch of leftovers but it was mostly the chicken and spinach.  I made a quick stir fry dish with the chicken, a whole onion, black bean sauce, and the spinach.  Totally delicious, but no pictures sorry.

Ohh look at him, a real shrimp that’s not processed, SO SCARY!!!  No my friend, do not be scared of this delicious sea-bug.  I will show you how to clean and devein Chuck here (yes I named him Chuck).  Why would you even buy an unprocessed shrimp as opposed to the nicely packaged shrimp in a bag?  Well one, a pound of giant shrimps like these will cost you ~$15/lb at the grocery store if you’re lucky.  If you clean them and devein them yourself, they are $5/lb at the Asian grocery stores.  For smaller shrimp, $3.50/lb.  It takes about 5-10 minutes to process them, definitely worth the time!  Plus I spit on those who lets a good shrimp head go to waste.  SPIT!  You have to eat the shrimp heads, suck the brains out, nomnom.  Ok if you are too scared to eat the head, reserve the head and peel for a shrimp stock, it’s got mmm mmm flavor.

First, rinse Chuck under cold water and give him a good shower.  Then take some kitchen shears and give his tentacles a good trim, and feel free to snip off the tip of the head including the eyeballs, who wants to look at eyeballs when they’re eating Chuck?  The spike on top of his head is quite pokey, so be careful when handling, take your shears and follow the contour of his head and snip it right off.  Think of it as a shrimp mohawk, and you’re the establishment and decided that he has to be shaven bald.   When you are done, your shrimp should look like this, no more eyes, tentacles fairly trimmed down (you can leave them on too if you like tentacles… ):

Now it’s time to devein Chuck.  This is the part where we remove his intestinal tract, it’s usually full of dirt and shrimp poop, so we really don’t want to cook that along with our shrimp.  First, make an incision right between the head and the body with your kitchen shears, about an inch long.  You can actually go the whole way as well and sometimes it might be very necessary if your shrimp has really dirty poop.  These were fairly clean and I only cut an inch to keep the integrity of the shell a little better during cooking.  You should see the vein after you’ve made this incision.  See where I’m pointing to it with my index finger?  That brown line there is the poop chute.

Now with your fingers/nails, grab a hold of the vein and pull it right out.  It helps to straighten the entire shrimp body when doing this.  If the vein isn’t coming out very easily with a little pressure, consider splitting your shrimp out all the way to the tail.  Rinse your shrimp under cold water to remove any residue.   This is what should be coming out.

As you can see, Chuck and his fellow shrimp did not eat a big meal before their deaths, so their intestinal tract is not that dirty.  I’ve seen much worse, where the entire thing is just black.  Gross.  It’s not harmful to you if it’s not cleaned 100%, it might just make your shrimp a little sandy and gross psychologically, but it’s not gunna kill you.

After your shrimp is prepped, time to fry them!!

Evie’s Salt and Pepper Shrimp

Ingredients:

• 1 lb head-on shrimp, cleaned and deveined and dried with paper towel
• 1/4 cup flour
• 2 tablespoons corn starch
• a pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon kosher or sea salt
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon Szechuan numbing pepper (optional) or a few slices of jalapenos
• enough canola oil to cover the shrimp in the wok in batches

Directions:

1. Combine the flour, corn starch, and a pinch of salt in a large bowl.  Add the cleaned and deveined shrimp, toss to coat.
2. Heat up canola oil in wok, the oil should be about 375 degrees, but I just gauge it by eye.  It should not be smoking, and it should look hot and glossy enough for a proper fry.
3. Fry the shrimp in batches, 4 or 5 at a time.  I had about 14, so finished frying in 3 batches.  They don’t need to be fried very long, about 4 minutes should do it, lay the shrimp on a paper towel to drain.
4. Discard the oil and wash the wok and reheat.  Add the kosher salt, ground black pepper, and the Szechuan numbing pepper to a hot wok.  Stir for about a minute so the pepper can get a bit aromatic and flavorful.  Add the shrimp to the salt and pepper mixture and stir to cover, about another minute.  
5. Plate and Serve Chuck and his friends with sauteed pea shoots over rice!

About 15 minutes after they opened (we were hungry for an early dinner) we walked in, the whole place was empty, which is to be expected.  Here is how it played out:

waitress #1: Hello! Have you been helped?  Oh let me get the maitre d’ for you!
30 seconds later…
maitre d: Hello!  I’m Eric, I’ll be right with you!
1 minute later…
waitress #2: Hi! Have you been helped?  Let me go get Eric for you!
25 seconds later…
waiter #3: Hello there, Eric will be right with you!
1 minute later…..
Eric: Hi, sorry about the wait!
At this point, we didn’t see anybody else in the restaurant and it was almost comical.  What is Eric doing back there?
a) Sewing up a rip in his new pants
b) Beating the last level of Super Mario Bros
c) It’s a portal to a parallel universe where he is also the maitre d’ OH MY GOD THAT BLEW MY MIND.
d) All of the above.
Eric proceeded to greet us, and spent about 30 seconds hacking the gibson typing on the computer, then run off again, I mean literally, he ran away.  I think he went to get more menus.  I didn’t ask.
1 minute later…
Eric asked for our names, and 30 seconds later we sat down.

I work for the government, and this whole process was very familiar to me so I didn’t really mind.  I still don’t know if there’s another dining room or parallel universe in the back or what, but he seemed to really enjoy it back there.

We started off with an amuse-bouche, which I love because I love eating duh. It’s a shrimp spring roll garnished with grapefruit, in a mint basil pesto.  Everything about this was delicious, except the wrapper was doubled and tripled over so many times that the outer layer seemed a bit gelatinous and thick.  Don’t get me wrong, this was delicious and only $2.50, can’t go wrong with that.

Our next course was the SHEFZILLA SURPRISE.  Yup, this is actually the picture on the menu.  It’s a dinosaur, wearing a chef’s hat, if you can’t tell.  You are not allowed to know what it is before you order it, because duh stupid, it’s a surprise.  They do tell you the price, and today it was $11. You also have to let them know of any allergies you might have, like the table next to us, guy was all “I’m allergic to shellfish” – wow dude, sucks to be you.  This idea is pretty genius, I mean how do you NOT order that?  Just look at the picture!

And now… the surprise!  It’s a seared diver scallop in a carrot foam with dehydrated corn.  Also a very tasty dish, the corn was especially great because it gave the scallop some sweetness.  The only awful part is that there is only one scallop and I had to share it with Sean. I ate really fast and I think I got most of it, sucker!

Our main courses, I had the Australian sea bass with parsley puree, parsnips, and creamy mussel foam, topped with some crispy wonton skins.  This was amaaaaazing, probably the best sea bass I’ve had.  And you wouldn’t think a parsley puree would taste good, but it had little chunks of parsnips inside that gave it a really sweet flavor and it complemented the sea bass perfectly.  Although I do have to say, I’m not a huge fan of foam, just give me the broth ok, I really don’t need it to be bubbly and textured, it doesn’t add much to a dish.