Seafood Cakes with Mustard Crema

I made this for dinner last night and it was quite good!

The recipes comes from Cooking Light and was pretty easy! The magazine also offered a watercress salad recipe, but I opted for something else. I bought a bag of 'Artisinal rocket zest' with arugula and other goodies packed in it and tossed it with the Pioneer Woman's 'Aunt Trish' salad dressing. It's one of the best dressings I've ever had! It's a new favorite of mine, for sure.

Seafood Cakes with Mustard Crema

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Ingredients:

1/3 cup light sour cream

6 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley, divided

1 Tbsp stone-ground mustard

1/2 tsp black pepper

7 tsp canola oil, divided

1/4 cup finely chopped red onion

1/4 cup finely chopped celery

8 ounces peeled and deveined cocktail shrimp (recipe calls for raw, but using cooked made this go even faster)

8 ounces lump crab meat (fresh or canned is fine)

1/4 cup (1 ounce) grated fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (or Parmesan, my lame grocery store didn't have any of the good stuff!)

1/4 tsp salt

2 large egg whites, lightly beaten

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1 cup Panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)

First, make the sauce by combining sour cream, 2 tablespoons parsley, mustard, and 1/8 teaspoon pepper, stirring with a whisk until blended. Set aside.

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.

Combine shrimp and crab in a large bowl.

 

Stir in onion mixture, add 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. If they don't feel like they're sticking together that well, then you can refrigerate after shaping into patties. I didn't do this, but it probably would have helped.

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. I did mine in batches because my pan wasn't big enough. The first batch was perfect at exactly 3 minutes on each side, but the rest seemed to brown much quicker, so I had to pay attention!

*Side story: I'm proud of myself on this one. I tend to avoid anything that resembles deep frying, pan frying or anything involving hot grease popping everywhere! For some reason, it makes me incredibly nervous. But, I followed the instructions, let the patties do their thing without hovering over them, and they were perfect!

Serve with the greens and mustard sauce*. So yummy!!


*Another side story: The mustard sauce tasted great, but ended badly for me. Long story short, I got very sick in the middle of the night and after doing some detective work, realized that it was from the stone-ground mustard used in the sauce. The jar said it expired in 2007! We haven't even been married that long! So, the grocery store must have been selling it by mistake because I've only had the jar for about 6 months. YUCK. Now I'm going to go through the whole fridge and keep an eye on expiry dates more closely! Lesson learned! Ewww.