Blow Your Socks Off, Poor Man's Crab Cakes, With Mango Sauce...

Fresh crab is expensive, so I made these little beauties with mashed potato as the binder.  I also cooked a live crab, and then picked the meat.  It's a bit of work, but worth it in the end.  If you have a friend in the restaurant business, have them order you a pound of fresh crab meat...

Recipe makes about six large crab cakes:
1 cup celery chopped finely
1 cup onion chopped finely
1 cup red bell pepper chopped finely
1 & 1/2 cups mashed potatoes
1 egg
2 three-finger pinches sea salt
1 three-finger pinch black pepper
1 three-finger pinch cayenne
1 live crab about 1&1/2 - 2 pounds

6 - egg rings or cookie cutter type rings

First fill a large pot with salted water and bring to a boil.  When water boils add the poor little crab, shell side down.  When water comes back up to a boil, then set your timer for 20 minutes.  When done remove crab from the water and place into a sink or bucketful of ice cold water.  Let it rest until cold, about 5 minutes.  This process releases the meat from the shell.

Clean the crab under running water, now crack and pick the meat and place in the refrigerator.  Now cook your potatoes and then mash with butter and olive oil, don't use milk or cream, as you want a thick paste to bind.  Place in the refrigerator to cool.  TIP:  If you don't know how to clean and crack a crab, contact me.

Add finely chopped vegetables to a hot saute pan with a little olive or coconut oil, salt and pepper and cayenne, cook until soft but not brown, a little color is alright.  When done place in refrigerator to cool.

When everything is cold, place all ingredients and the egg into a large bowl and mix with your hands or a spoon.  Lay out your egg rings on a piece or grease-proof paper and fill with the crab mixture, making sure to compact it, so it stays together.

Now heat a saute pan up over medium heat with two tablespoons olive oil (not extra virgin).  When the oil is hot, slide a steel spatula under a crab cake ring and move to the pan, one at a time, leaving the ring in the pan to hold everything together.  Repeat with the remaining cakes.  Turn after a few minutes, you want them to brown a little but not too much.

We served our crab cakes with rice, sauteed onions and chard, and with white wine, mango and honey sauce.  To save time you can use mango chutney that's been heated up in a small saucepan.

To make the sauce from scratch, peel and chop a couple of fresh mangos and puree in a food processor.  Reduce two cups of white wine down to about a half a cup, then add mangos and reduce a little more.  Turn the heat off and add two tablespoons of honey and stir.

Bon Appetit!

Indian Chicken Curry

A traditional Indian curry.  You can ad meat, chicken, fish or tofu.  I made this dish for the kids the other night, served with rice and puppodums, a big hit it was!

Recipe for four:
1 13oz can organic tomatoes
1 13oz can organic stock (homemade is better)
1 large red onion chopped
4 carrots chopped
3 stalks celery chopped
4 cloves garlic skin removed
2" ginger skin removed
2 Tablespoons mild curry powder
2 Tablespoons coconut or olive oil (not extra virgin)
1 pack organic chicken tenders (optional)
8 Sharwoods plain puppodums available at gourmet galley
1 bunch cilantro
1 cup plain yogurt
2 three finger pinches of salt and pepper
Mango chutney

First turn your oven on to 325*  In a blender puree tomatoes.  place in a roasting pan along with the stock and cover with foil, place in the oven for two hours, checking once and a while making sure it doesn't dry out, adding more stock if needed.  Don't hurry this step, this is what gives the curry an intense flavor.  Tip: don't let the foil touch the tomatoes, tomatoes are acid and it will eat the foil!

Rough chop, onion, carrot, celery garlic and ginger.  Now place in the food processor or blender and puree,  if you use a blender you may need a little olive oil to make it work!  This will become the sauce.

Place a heavy saute pan over medium high heat with the oil or butter, when the pans good and hot, add the mixture and fry it, stirring so not to brown about 2-3 minutes.  Now add the curry powder and cook for another minute, season with salt and pepper.

When the tomatoes are done, add the vegetable mixture and stir, adding more stock if needed.  Place back in the oven for another hour.  Make sure there's enough liquid, don't let it dry out, add more stock if needed.  When it's almost done, start your rice.  While rice is cooking season the chicken tenders and saute in olive oil, browning both sides.  When cooked, add to the sauce.  If you're making this dish with beef or lamb,  flour and brown all sides, and cook with the sauce for about an hour.

Now cook the puppodums by frying in olive oil.  As soon as you put one of the discs in the oil, turn it and keep turning them.  They will cook very quickly!

When the rice is done, pull the curry out of the oven,  add the yogurt and cilantro and stir...  Serve over rice, with a little mango chutney on the side!  This sounds like a lot of work, but it's not, it takes time.

Bon Appetit!