gooooons

Delicious party appetizer :) an improved recipe from a previous post.


What you'll need:
10 oz of cream cheese
12 oz of fine (not chunky) crab meat
1 pinch of ground ginger powder
2 pinches of toasted sesame oil
2 teaspoons of minced garlic
1 pinch of salt
handfull of scallions
fillo dough



chop scallions!

mix crab meat with cream cheese at room temperature. add scallions. add oil, garlic, and salt slowly while mixing on low. yup! wrap a tablespoon in a little packet of fillo dough and roll it up like a short, chubby egg roll. tips for working with fillo dough: work quickly, with cold dry hands. you want the fillo dough to be cool, as soon as it warms up it will become difficult to work with.

place on a non stick pan, lightly drizzle in evoo and cook at 375 until the fillo dough appears to be crispy and golden. (slightly over 10 min) let sit for a few & serve.

sweet and sour sauce:

in a pan, add pineapple juice, ketchup, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, and apple sauce. all to taste. should be tangy to offset the goons.

[Insert some witty oscar reference here]

So yesterday's food adventure was a simple success! I don't have any photos to share with you, as they were gobbled up in a second, but I made a nice little batch of crab rangoons to bring to an Oscar party. I wanted to use the rest of the crab meat leftover from the cakes and some other ingredients that were literally just around. The only things that I didn't have yet were the fillo dough (my poor confused boyfriend was at the store looking for phylo-foam, hahah) and scallions.
I have never made crab rangoons before and I glossed over some recipes, but this is what I threw together...

1 pckg of cream cheese
12 oz of crab meat
chives, scallions
few dashes of ground roasted ginger, garlic salt
fillo dough
- Put cream cheeze at room temperature or even a bit warmer, mix in the crab meat and the remaining ingredients to taste. I used a teasp of ginger and a little more of the garlic salt, and a few tablespoons of both the scallions and chives. Refridgerate mixture for 20 minutes or until the consistency is a firmer solid.
- I've never worked with fillo dough before and found it interesting. My advice before using it was, be careful, it falls apart, keep it cold, have cold hands. I made sure that there were enough layers of this papery thin dough over the filling so that the pastry puff was not transparent. I just wrapped the dough around a modest spoonful of mixture and placed it on a cookie sheet and drizzled it with olive oil.
- Cook for 10-15 minutes at 350. Place cookie sheet in center of the oven, so as not to burn the bottoms or top (They're so delicate!) They are ready when the sides of the rangoons are golden.
- Let them sit for a few minutes before serving! The insides are piping hot.
- Makes around 15-20 crab rangoons, depending on the size.

mish mash dipping sauce:
apple sauce
ketchup
orange juice
vinegar
sugar
soy, teriyaki
- all boiled and add ingredients to taste

A very successful party food. They were gone within minutes (next time I'll know better...)

Any advice for working with fillo dough? Let me know.

It must be the weather

Today I had an overwhelming sensation to use crab meat. I really did. I was thinking maybe some crab rangoons with cream cheese, scallions, a bit o ginger, garlic, red onion, etc... But then I remembered someone telling me how difficult it is to make a perfect crab cake. I wanted to see how close I could get without following a recipe. Here goes:

1 Gala apple, processed
1 Large yellow onion, processed
1 red pepper, processed
1 sleeve of white flour buttery crackers (I used trader joes social crackers) * I also used a couple pieces of whole wheat bread and about a cup of rice crispies , all processed. yay for magic bullets!
18 oz of crab meat
4 tblsp of fresh lemon
1/2 cup of chives, chopped finely
1 1/4 cup of freshly grated parmesan chz
2-3 cups of panko bread crumbs
1 cup mayonaisse

4 tblsp minced crushed garlic

1 stick o butter
1 egg
* Go veg! : 1 portabello mushroom, processed

Quick! The Aioli!

Bowl - 1 cup of mayo, more or less depending on how much you like aioli.

Whilst processing the red pepper, over a tblsp of red pepper juice was produced. So. I used that, along with a tblsp or so of the processed red pepper and a tblsp of lemon juice and a modest handful of chives, add salt and pepper to taste. Done and done.

As for the rest.

1. Put bread crumbs in large bowl.
2. Melt stick of butter in frying pan and simmer chopped onions med low til cooked. Add mixture to bread crumbs.
3. The bread crumbs should still be a little dry, add egg and lemon juice to mixture until all is moist.
4. Add the rest of the red pepper, the apple, and a modest handful of chives. And a couple of tablespoons of minced garlic. 2 - 4, depending on your taste for garlic.
5. Here's where I split. My 2 roomates are veggie, so I made a little batch for them, processing a half a portabello mushroom and adding that to the mix. The rest of the batch I used a ton of crabmeat, 18 oz, for some really crabby cakes. ahah. Mix it in and season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, whatever, to taste. I love using pink himalayan sea salt, cracked black pepper, white pepper, love it!
6. Roll into balls of a size you would like to eat. For appetizer portions, I like to do a meatball size. Entrees, 2, 2.5 meatballs mushed into one. I roll the balls in panko bread crumbs and either store them to be cooked later on, or place them on a cookie sheet with tinfoil.
   
   
7. Bake those biddies for 12 minutes at 425 or until the panko bread crumbs are browning.
8. Drizzle with red pepper aioli and SERVE! I love a sprout and spinach garnish.

~ 25 appetizer crab cakes, or ~ 12 entree crab cakes.

UPDATE: I tried making crab cakes again for my family a few days later. I nixed the parm cheeze and used about half the bread crumbs. I added a little parsley and a scoop of mayonaisse. They were delicious... Wayyy better! But if you were gonna stick with the portobello, I would keep the same amount of bread crumbs and cheeze, add parsley, no mayo. muah.

summer delish... Alyssa's funked out tuna sandwich.

4 cans of tuna, squeeze out all the moisture

couple spoonfuls of mayo

squeeze an entire lime and put lots o pulp in there

lots of cilantro and parsley
tomatos, european cucumber, jalapeno --> diced (and optional)

salt, pepper

on toasted whole wheat bread

and maybe some avocado slices on top. mmm :)