This is a variation on crab cakes I’ve done in the past. This time I only sauteed up shallots and garlic and threw a little chopped arugula in at the last few seconds. Added salt, pepper and chopped thyme. The hardest part of the crab cakes is getting the crab meat out of the shells, the rest is a cinch! The key is to not touch the cakes in the pan until the are crispy brown on the bottom or else they’ll completely fall apart. Put the patties in and walk away. I also used semolina flour to dredge them in instead of white flour. I like the texture better.
Crab Cakes on Arugula
I just drizzled a quick dressing of shallots, lemon, salt and olive oil over the cakes and salad.
There is a recipe in The French Laundry Cookbook for “Clam Chowder” which, of course, is nothing like clam chowder because it’s Thomas Keller’s twist on a classic dish. It’s cod cakes with cod and clams. It’s a fantastic dish, I’ve made it before, actually following the recipe. It takes hours. It is not a dish for a weeknight after work.
I used it as an inspiration for these cod cakes though. This made 3 servings.
1 1/2 lb cod
4 potatoes
1 large shallot
1/2 bulb fennel
2 cloves garlic
1 stalk celery
2 c. white wine
herbs
peppercorns
1/4 stick butter
Peel, dice and boil potatoes…preferably yukon golds, I used whatever I’d gotten from my CSA. Drain and mash up in a bowl with 1/4 stick of butter.
Dice and saute in olive oil: shallot, fennel, 1 clove garlic, celery. When soft, add to potatoes.
Trim true cod down so you have small, pretty, rectangular filets. Set those aside.
Cut the trimmings down to 1-2 inch pieces and put in a sauce pan with some herb sprigs (I used marjoram), 6 peppercorns, a clove of smashed garlic and a cup or 2 of white wine. Simmer until fish is cooked. Remove fish from pan and smoosh it up in the bowl w/ the sauteed veggies and potatoes.
Add salt and pepper and put the mixture in the refrigerator for a bit so you can handle it.
Once the mixture is cool, heat up olive oil in a pan and form patties out of the potato-cod mixture.
Place them in the heated olive oil and then walk away…don’t touch them until they are truly browned or they will fall apart and become potato-cod hash.
When brown, flip and leave them alone again.
Remove from pan and place on paper towels to absorb extra oil.
While the cod cakes are browning, cook your cod fillets up in olive oil with just salt as seasoning. Cod is beautiful on its own, you don’t need anything else.
I served them on top of a kohlrabi puree (like mashed potatoes only better). Or you can serve atop salad with a nice lemony vinaigrette (caesar salad is good, so is a butter lettuce salad with lemon-shallot dressing) – salad, then cod cakes, then cod filet on top.
I picked up my fish from my Seafood CSA (CSS – Community Supported Seafood) yesterday. It’s fun to have no idea what I’m going to cook until after 1:30 when i pick up my fish! Surprise! I came home and pondered for a while. Stared into my fridge….I had a fennel bulb and a chunk of garlic. I almost always have chicken broth since another CSA I’m in gives me 2 dozen eggs and 2 chickens every 2 weeks. The recipe started coming together in my head.
This serves 2 people and could easily be scaled up.
I put a quart of chicken stock on low heat and simmered it with about 2 inches of ginger root, sliced and one fennel bulb, sliced. That simmered about an hour. Reducing by about 1/4th.
Meanwhile, I took the 2 yellow potatoes I had and sliced them as thinly as I could. I don’t have a mandoline. Well, that’s not true, I have one and haven’t the foggiest idea how to set it up or use it. So I use my wicked sharp knife instead! I put the slices into a bowl of ice water where they remained until I was ready to fry them up.
I whisked together:
1/4 cup white miso
2 T seasoned rice vinegar
2 t soy sauce
a dash of cayenne
Grapeseed Oil
I brushed that over the sea bass fillets. This is not chilean sea bass. It’s locally caught white sea bass. It’s more of a cod texture…actually, it may be a type of cod?? Not sure! Sustainable, green-listed fish :)
Cut the fillet into 1/3-1/2 pound pieces. Brush the miso paste onto the top and bottom of the fillet. Set these aside for a few minutes.
Frying crisps
Fill a semi-high-sided pan with about 1″ or so of grapeseed oil (or other high-heat oil). I love the shade of green that the grapeseed oil has. It just looks cool. Bring the temperature of the oil up to 350°. I’ve had this candy thermometer for years and I don’t think I’ve ever used it. Glad I had it though! While waiting for the oil to heat over medium-high heat, remove the potato slices from the ice water and dry them thoroughly with paper towels. You don’t want them wet or you’ll get splattered with hot oil! Carefully drop the slices into the hot oil a batch at a time. I put about 10-15 slices in at a time and it didn’t drop the temperature of the oil dramatically. Let them dance around in the oil until they are brown. Remove carefully and place on paper towels to drain the oil, I also dabbed the tops with papertowels, then sprinkle with a nice finishing salt. I used Shinkai Deep Sea Salt and it was perfect.
Things got a bit hectic when I was trying to do crisps and fish at the same time. Put the sea bass into a quite-hot pan with a little olive oil. I wanted a nice crust on the outside of the fish and a pretty raw center. This fish was caught the day before, it was beautifully fresh. Sear for 1-2 minutes on each side.
Place the fish in a shallow bowl. Strain the simmering broth into the bowl. Sprinkle with chopped scallions. Serve the crisps on the side.
We drank, oddly, a pink wine with this. I hate pink wine typically but this one was light and citrusy and paired rather well.
I host a soup night, ideally once a month, but really it happens when we have a free weekend night. I make a huge pot of soup, customized each time for the number of people coming and the allergies/preferences/aversions of the guests. It’s really, really fun and it gives us a way to actually get together with our friends regularly even when life is hectic. It’s a different group of people each time…and if there is every a time that everyone on the invite list can show up, I’m not sure what we’ll do, our house isn’t nearly big enough!
This time I live-tweeted the making of the soup, just for fun. A sort of step-by-step recipe without instructions! This is enough soup for 16-18 people.
3 onions:
Onions
4-5 quarts chicken stock simmering on the back burner:
Chicken Stock Simmering
3-4 carrots (mulitcolored, they looked cool!):
Added Carrots
1 fennel bulb and 4 stalks celery:
Fennel and Celery
Cooking all that stuff down, entertaining myself with the camera:
Waiting for veggies to cook down
4 yellow potatoes:
Potatoes will go in next
3/4 bottle white wine and 6 cloves garlic:
Added white wine and garlic
One bunch kale, somewhat “julienned”…I’d say finely shredded:
Shredded Kale
6 small zucchini:
Zucchini
Snap peas, halved:
Lastly, snap peas
In there with the zucchini went 3 cans of cannellini beans and then the soup was ladeled over spaghetti that I broke in half before boiling (so it would be possible to eat it with a spoon!)
To serve it was first pasta, then soup, pesto on top of that (basil-walnut-lots of lemon), and for everyone but me, shredded parmesean.
Shred 2 lbs of potatoes, I used the shredder in my food processor, and one sweet onion. I just picked up some walla walla onions that went well. I also used a combination of white, purple and red potatoes to make these look funky :)
Place the potato-onion mixture in a strainer, salt the mix and let it sit over the sink for a while to draw out some of the water. I let mine sit for, maybe, 30 minutes? Longer is probably better.
Squeeze the mixture in some paper towels and get as much moisture out as you can.
Take a bit of the mixture and make a small patty, place some smoked salmon on top of the patty, then place more of the potato mixture on top of the salmon to seal it inside.
Drop this filled potato pancake gently into a small amount of oil and fry it up until it’s brown and crispy…flip it and brown the other side.
Do this on medium heat so they potatoes don’t brown too quickly or they’ll still be raw on the inside!
I realized right as these were finishing that I needed a sauce for them. I’d just picked up plain yogurt so I just minced a garlic clove, mixed that into some yogurt, added a little cayenne and salt and it was perfect! So simple.
This is basically the springtime version of my fall mushroom salad. Subtract chanterelles, add green garlic. Voila!
Easy: Spinach…wash it, put it on a plate
Lentils…cook them with a clove of garlic and some thyme. Choose your preferred liquid to cook them in, I use chicken stock.
Green garlic dressing…recipe featured here.
To plate…well, spinach, then spoon some lentils on top, then drizzle some dressing on that. You didn’t need me to spell that out did you? Oh, and if you like, crumble bacon on top. To pretty it up, I added some julienned turnips and chive flowers.
I love the CSA season. I can eat ridiculously healthy with very little effort or thought. When all that is in the fridge is vegetables, lunch or a quick snack is so seasonably delicious whether you try or not! The salad was a mix of lettuces, 2 multicolored carrots thinly sliced and one HUGE radish, also thinly sliced. I tossed it with the following dressing:
Recipe: Green Garlic Dressing
Ingredients
One green garlic, minced
1t fresh thyme
1t minced chives
3T champagne vinegar
Enough good olive oil to make it dressing-y
Salt and pepper
Instructions
Let green garlic, thyme and chives “steep” in the vinegar with some salt for at least 10 minutes. It softens the garlic and lets the flavors permeated the vinegar. Whisk in the oil and you’re done!
I was torn between two dishes for dinner. I wanted soba noodle soup but I had all these wonderful CSA veggies to use. So I decided to try introducing two recipes to one another. Turns out they should definitely be friends! I have some of the greens-beef mixture left over today which I’m going to have over rice for lunch. I didn’t, however, take a picture of any of this…it smelled so good I just devoured it!
When I make it again, I’ll try to remember to take one and add it here.
Before you start anything else, get your water going for soba noodles and your dashi simmering.
Saute spring onions, ginger, chilis, garlic, soy sauce and fish sauce until onions start to soften. Add bok choy and cilantro. Add water if soy or fish sauce is getting too sticky in the pan. When everything is desired consistency, add beef and cook until just under your preferred doneness (you will be putting hot broth on this so it will cook a little more).
Remove greens and meat from pan, leaving liquid to reduce.
Put soba noodles in a bowl, add a heaping pile of beef-green concoction, spoon some of the reduction on top to add even more flavor, top with chopped green onions and pour dashi over all that.
Quick Notes
Try not to drool in the bowl–especially if you’re serving others.
