Around the World in 80 Dishes: #1 & 2
I enjoy cooking. I don’t do it every night; in fact I usually just cook on Monday night for the week ahead, then maybe something special on the weekend. But I try to do something new each time and keep broadening my horizons. Until now, I got the vast majority of my recipes from AllRecipes.com. It’s a great place to find relatively simple and good dishes that a lot of people have tried and enjoyed.
But recently I’ve been looking for a bit more of a challenge. So after perusing Epicurious.com, I stumbled upon their ongoing series “Around the World in 80 Dishes.” Intrigued, I started watching the various videos which demonstrated how to make each. Most were dishes I hadn’t made or even tried and many looked like a good challenge to stretch my abilities. So I’m gonna see how many of ‘em I can knock out over the next year or so. Nothing as formal or involved as Julie & Julia, but admittedly similar.
Anyway, I started off strong tonight by knocking out two of the featured dishes. For dinner: Crab Cakes hailing from Maryland, USA. For dessert: Sweet Crêpes from Brittany, France.
Crab Cakes
I’ve never made crab cakes, or even had them. I never really considered myself a fan of shellfish of any kind. In fact, it was only a few years ago that I really started to appreciate fish. I think it’s mainly the smells I always associated with the creatures; it always made them seem unappealing. But since my goal with this project is to try new things, I figured I’d better get over my preconceived notions and try to enjoy a crab dish.
I expected crab meat to be a bit tough to find and expensive here in Austin, TX. I was right. My local Sprouts had 8oz. containers of picked Blue crab meat for $13. I had already been planning to halve the recipe (the original calls for 2lb of crab). After seeing this, I opted instead to quarter it. Turned out to work out fine as that made three large cakes, each of which is large enough for a small dinner. Around $5/meal is steep when cooking at home, but ultimately not bad.
Reading the reviews, I found that a number of people criticized the use of sour cream and paprika, instead suggesting mayonnaise and Old Bay seasoning. They also suggested less bread crumbs. I followed these suggestions and it turned out great. Perfect texture that held together very well, and delicious. The flavors aren’t particularly bold, but there’s subtlety here that kind of builds after the initial fried fish taste passes. I doubt this will be a common dish for me to make due to the price, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that I do enjoy at least one shellfish dish!
Before putting in the fridge for a few hours.
Cooking up nice and golden!
Probably should be paired with a white wine, but I’m swimming in Merlot. It’s a 2006 Festival ‘34 Merlot that I got for almost nothing on sale at Sprouts. Fresh lemon juice went great with this. Tartar sauce would be preferable to ketchup, but it worked. The cake was good enough on its own that I ate most of it without ketchup.
Sweet Crêpes
I don’t have fond memories of crêpes, primarily because they’re often stuffed with a lot of whipped cream or cream cheese, neither of which I really like unless as a subtle addition to something else. But the pancakes themselves are good, and I thought they’d be a good challenge since I’ve heard they’re hard to make.
I was happy to find out that, at least when made this way, they’re not difficult at all! I used my Calphalon infused anodized frying pan and with a little butter, they came up beautifully! No tearing. Mine may have been a bit thicker than is ideal, and they definitely weren’t perfectly circular (my pan was to large to have them fill the bottom), but they tasted great and came out nice and flaky! In the picture below I filled one with raspberries and banana, another with sugar and lemon juice (my favorite), and the other with sugar and cinnamon. Yum! I made a half batch which made over a dozen pancakes, but apparently they freeze well so it’s not a bad idea to make a lot!
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