Birthday Dinner

Dad and I collaborated on my birthday dinner last night. We had Crab Louis, Stromboli Bread, Golden Mushroom Soup, and two cute little desserts Dad picked up at AJ's. And Dad stayed up late and did all the dishes!

I saw this Stromboli Bread in a bread cookbook. I made my regular French bread dough (3 cups white flour) with the addition of 2 tablespoons of olive oil and let it rise; rolled it out to about 8 by 14 inches; sprinkled it with a mixture of Swiss cheese cubes, shredded parmesan, chopped ham, 2 cloves garlic, and a handful of chopped basil; rolled it up starting at the short end and brushed it with olive oil, then sprinkled on salt, pepper, and chopped rosemary; then poked holes in it before baking it without a second rising at 400 degrees for an hour. It was good-looking and delicious.

Really Big Crab Legs

Russell and Britt shipped us 10 pounds of King crab from Alaska for Christmas--the best and largest we've ever had. The yield from the big legs and claws was so much more, proportionally: we prepared about 6 pounds for 5 people on Christmas Day, and we had about a pound of lump meat left for crab cakes the next day! I used your recipe for the crab cakes.

New Crab Salad

This salad may never happen again, because it required hyper-fresh crab meat and just the perfect ingredients. But it came together nicely -- the crab was so sweet and delicate. And it was the perfect accompaniment to chicken wings.

I dressed some crab with lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper and let it sit for 10 minutes. Then I tossed it with arugula and topped it with crumbled goat cheese and pieces of rice crackers. Wonderful texture -- crispy and soft and cool.

Update: Turns out Anne Postic wrote about crab salad in today's Free Times. What are the odds? Her recipe sounds wonderful.

Crab Cakes

Every year at the beach Lawson makes crab cakes. But this year we brought the crabs back home to pick, and I made the crab cakes.

I used a simple combination of several recipes. This was roughly it:

1 lb crab meat
1 cup crushed crackers (These were thin rice-and-wheat cocktail crackers. Saltines would work, or bread crumbs.)
2 or more T mayonnaise
1 T Dijon mustard
1 T lemon juice
1 t lemon zest
1 egg
1/2 onion, diced and sauteed
3 T parsley, finely chopped
salt and pepper

Mix; form into 4 to 6 cakes; roll in salted cornmeal; chill for an hour or two; pan fry.

I also made a salad that we ate over two days -- one of my usual bean, herb, and citrus summer salads. It contained garbanzo beans, mint, cilantro, roasted red peppers, carrots, pumpkin seeds, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper. On the second day I added some spinach.

Crab Cakes and Miscellany

I was so excited to get Molly O'Neill's American Food Writing: An Anthology with Classis Recipes from the library, and I did use one good recipe from it, but overall it was so disappointing. Where did she find 500+ pages of such boring writing about food? I am especially bummed out because I was thinking of sending it to you for your birthday, but it was a dud.

***

Once we were with Uncle George buying fried clams or something similar and I asked whether he wanted to get cocktail sauce. "Oh no!" He was firm. "That has to be homemade." Well, homemade cocktail sauce to George was ketchup, horseradish, Worcestershire sauce, and lemon juice. And very good it is, too. Last night I made some to go with our Crab Cakes.

Sections of King crab were on sale at our favorite store. The 4-inch lengths were so easy to deal with. A few minutes with kitchen shears and I had a big pile of crab meat (it cost about $7.50). I used the Joy of Cooking recipe which adds just a few seasonings, a little mayonnaise and bread crumbs; then you coat each cake in bread crumbs and chill. Fry about 4 minutes per side.

I served sweet potato fries (baked, really) and asparagus. We felt lucky.

Well, maybe Dad didn't feel all that lucky. I made a really big pile of dirty dishes in the process of making this meal!