Cooking the Blackacre Way

I offered Wife the choice of BBQ ribs or crab cakes for Valentine's Day.  She chose the latter (so I'm making the former today, Sunday).  Crab cakes are not anything that I make on a regular basis or truth be told hardly any basis at all.  So I sent a lifeline to the Nieces X and E in the Mid-Atlantic being pretty confident that that the enthusiastic cooks of that branch of the family would have something. 

This recipe comes from the test kitchen of the East Shore of Maryland plantation, Blackacre, the homestead of my older brother.

First needed - Crab

Ah Phillips a good ole Maryland brand of crab

Direct from India

Next it calls for shallots, jalapeno and poblano chiles.

Well that sounds more like what I can get here in the Southwest

And the venerable Maryland spice Old Bay Seasoning

Yikes all they had at our grocery is this garlic and herb version.

Hope that works

Next they call for homemade crab stock!

Jeesh were am I going to get that?

I'm pretty good at improvising so I made an ersatz fish/crab stock using some leftover poaching liquid from a fish I made on Friday plus some fish stock base, Thai fish sauce, and Vietnamese spicy crab paste

The recipe calls for you to dice the shallots and pepper in a lot of butter, then add the stock and cook the stock down.

Meanwhile I combined the crab, Old Bay plus some panko breadcrumbs in a bowl

So far so good

Next you take off the wet mixture, let cool some, and add butter

That's added to the other ingredients in the bowl and mixed together.

The mixture is rolled into 8 balls and fried in butter and oil 15 minutes to a side on a low to medium heat.

Look crab cakey?

Got to have a side dish so I took some corn on the cob from the summer out

Et Voila

Blackacre Style Crab Cakes

Truth be told I had a slight glitch in the recipe.  I don't think I reduced the stock mixture enough and as a result the cakes really didn't hold together.  It took a real deft had to keep them halfway together for turning and then getting them out of the pan.  On top of that I had the heat a bit too high at first.  Hence the more 'Louisiana blackened' look than the 'golden brown'  I was aiming for.

That said, they tasted excellent.  And though they didn't really hold together well, that same looseness has me inspired to use this recipe as the filling for some crab ravioli!