Crab Cakes...

I saw in this month's Gourmet a recipe for Crab Cakes. I'm a fan of crab cakes. I especially love mini crab cakes (ala passed hors d'ouvre style)... I've never made them before so when I saw that the recipe was a 30 minute or less jobby I figured I'd give it a go. First off, when making something new for the first time I highly recommend actually reading the recipe and writing down what you need, rather than just glancing at it and then committing the list of items to your fuzzy memory. I did the latter and only after I opened up both of my containers of jumbo lump crab meat did I realize I only needed 8 oz. trust me, 8 ounces is a lot of crab meat. Easily four good sized crab cakes. The recipe also calls for 2 tablespoons of mayonnaise, a touch of worchestshire sauce, 1 tablespoon of a large egg, beaten and 2 pieces of sandwich bread (torn up). Problem one: no mayo. Alas, though the mom had replaced my jar of mayo with a "big jar" of mayo, one birthday barbeque and some homemade potato salad later and no mayo. I figure, "I can make mayo... I only need two tablespoons!" Sure, but if you're going to make your own mayo and you've never done it before I would recommend reading the recipe for mayo shown in the Gourmet cookbook. Otherwise you'll just start beating one egg and adding some olive oil and you'll just have egg and oil but no mayo.

No Mayo aside, I mixed together my crab meat, torn up bread, egg/oil combo, a touch of seasoned breadcrumbs, a touch of salt, the lea & perrin's, and a dash of sour cream (as a further mayo substitute and hoped binding agent). I then heated up a bit of butter in a pan to brown the cakes. In the end? Not bad.