Seafood Cakes with Mustard Crema

Once again, this recipe is from my friend Dawn's seafood cooking party. The seafood cakes recipe is actually from a magazine called Cooking Light, but it's so delicious that it doesn't taste like "diet" food at all. I think a big part of that is probably owing to the fact that Matt, who was responsible for making this dish, bought fresh real crab meat from Whole Foods. An expensive but worthwhile investment since the crab meat is the star of the dish.

Dawn's six-burner semi-professional stove range browned the seafood cakes perfectly, as you will soon see below! The mustard crema sauce was really delicious (be sure to get coarse grain mustard and use fresh herbs). I think I'll be using that sauce on other seafood dishes as well. If you like sauce, I would double the sauce recipe.

Ingredients

* 1/3 cup light sour cream
* 6 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley, divided
* 1 tablespoon stone-ground mustard
* 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, divided
* 7 teaspoons canola oil, divided
* 1/4 cup finely chopped red onion
* 1/4 cup finely chopped celery
* 8 ounces peeled and deveined medium shrimp, chopped
* 8 ounces lump crabmeat, drained and shell pieces removed
* 1/4 cup (1 ounce) grated fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 2 large egg whites, lightly beaten
* 1 large egg, lightly beaten
* 1 cup panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)

Preparation

1. Combine sour cream, 2 tablespoons parsley, mustard, and 1/8 teaspoon pepper, stirring with a whisk until blended. Set aside.

Here is Matt chopping all the ingredients:

2. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add 1 teaspoon canola oil to pan, and swirl to coat. Add onion and celery; cook 5 minutes or until tender, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat; cool slightly.

3. Combine shrimp and crab in a large bowl. Stir in onion mixture, remaining pepper, remaining 1/4 cup parsley, cheese, salt, egg whites, and egg; stir gently. Add panko; stir gently. Divide mixture into 8 equal portions; flatten to 1/2-inch-thick patties.

Like this:

4. Heat skillet over medium-high heat. Add remaining 2 tablespoons oil to pan; swirl to coat. Add patties to pan; cook 3 minutes or until lightly browned.


Carefully turn over; cook 3 minutes or until done. Serve with sauce