Friday, October 7th, 2011 | posted by mike
Everybody loves crab cakes and our manager, Bernie, makes some pretty darn good ones that we offer at the Market. When it comes to making a great crab cake it’s always the simpler the better. Looking back at some of our old cook books, such as Maryland’s Way, a great compilation of recipes from homes, churches and old cookbooks that date back to 1634, crab cakes were very basic, mainly crabmeat, some egg, mayonnaise or butter for moisture and bread or crackers for binding.
Ingredients have evolved over the years but the main ingredient for a good crab cake is still great crab! There’s lots of crabmeat on the market, everything from canned Asian snow crab to the finest fresh picked jumbo lump crabmeat (crabmeat from blue crabs). Fresh blue crabmeat is scarce and very pricey right now but there are good alternatives. Most of the big crab suppliers down south now offer an imported pasteurized crab meat that’s pretty good quality, or you can try the crab we use in our cakes which is fresh Jonah crabmeat. Jonah crabs are rock crabs that we get from Maine and Massachusetts. They look kind of like a small Dungeness crab and have a sweet nutty flavor, not quite as intense as fresh blue crab but still a great crab for cakes, salads or stuffing.
Today’s recipe is a take on traditional Maryland crab cakes. A little simpler than Bernie’s and with less ingredients, these are easy and delicious . Serve them with lemon, your favorite hot sauce or Monahan’s remoulade.
