All I Want for my Birthday Dinner is Crab(cake)s

My long-suffering partner loves crab-cakes, so in 2012, I tried to make him crab-cakes for his birthday. The result was barely edible - too much Old Bay seasoning, too dry, too ... just gross in general. Scared me away from making crab-cakes for two solid years, through it fortunately didn't dim my partner's love of crab-cakes. Made me feel guilty every time he ordered them in a restaurant because a) crab-cakes are fucking expensive and b) it served as a reminder that I'd fucked up.

So this year, I decided to face my fears and bought the man two cans of crab for Christmas, with the promise that he could have crab-cakes whenever he wanted. He probably suffered PTSD from that, since the last crab-cakes I made were truly that awful, but by his birthday this year (three months later) he'd overcome his fear (or maybe his stomach had overwhelmed his fears) and asked me to make him some crab-cakes.

The recipe I found and used is easy and delicious. I glared at it suspiciously from the first moment I started cooking 'til the moment I was lifting the fork to my mouth for the first bite, then had to stop glaring because I was on the verge of re-enacting THAT SCENE from When Harry Met Sally. Yeah, that scene. 'Cept I wasn't going to be faking it.

So here's the birthday crab-cake recipe that changed my mind about crab-cakes. Pair it with a good Irish pear cider (Magner's) or a crisp apple cider (Harpoon) or, if you're feeling fancy, a crisp white wine. Enjoy!

All I Want for my Birthday Dinner is Crab(cake)s

Ingredients

1 tsp dry mustard

1 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp cayenne red pepper

1/4 tsp Old Bay seasoning

1 pinch salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

2 eggs

1 tbsp mayonnaise (or fake mayo - that's what I used)

6 green onions, chopped

1 lb tinned crab-meat, drained

1 sleeve Ritz crackers (30 crackers, yes I counted)

Breadcrumbs (panko or otherwise - I had Italian seasoned, so that's what I used)

Oil for frying (I used a mix of vegetable and olive oils)

Good spicy brown mustard for serving

Salad

1 nice crisp granny smith green apple

1/4 cup feta or bleu cheese

1/4 cup raspberry vinaigrette dressing

Booze

- Apple cider (Harpoon, y'all)

- Pear cider (Magner, y'all)

- White wine (pfft, whatever, we're not classy around here)

Instructions

Crab-cakes

- In a medium mixing bowl, combine dry spices - mustard, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, Old Bay, salt, black pepper.

- Add the wet stuff - eggs, mayonnaise, green onions.

- Add the crackers and crab-meat.

- Mix until it's thoroughly combined.

- Start heating like 1/4" oil in a pan. I used my big fry-pan, but I'm pretty sure I could've gotten away with the smaller one with less smoke in the kitchen OOPS.

- Form the meat mixture into small patties - they should be like 1/2" thick and 2.5" in diameter and pat in the bread/panko/whatever crumbs

- Fry for ... gosh, I don't even know. Maybe like a minute or two? on the first side, until it's browned. Flip and fry the other side less time. Maybe like 45 seconds to a minute? I should've timed this.

- Set on a cooling rack covered in a paper towel to drip while you put the second batch in.

- If you don't fuck up, this will yield 12 patties. I fucked up and got 9 normal patties and two wimpy-gimpy patties, whaddya want from me.

- Serve with an artful smear of spicy mustard on each. Pro-tip: Don't make your "artful smear" a dot of mustard or you end up with crab-cakes that look awkwardly like boobies.

Salad

- Quarter and core a nice crisp granny smith apple you haven't totally had around the house for a month and a half and have been ignoring.

- Cut it into slices 1/8"ish thick, then chop it the other way into pieces about 1/2" in size.

- Combine with ... fuck, probably 1/4 cup feta cheese? I really should've fucking measured.

- Add three squirts (let's give up and call it 1/4 cup) raspberry vinaigrette dressing.

- Toss 'til it's all combined and serve. 

Booze

- Yes.

Enjoy!