It’s a type of crab. And it’s just tastes AWESOME!

Did that get your attention?  It definitely caught mine!  So when my mom and I arrived into Baltimore for my dearest friend Susie’s wedding, we beelined straight from the airport to Miss Shirley’s Cafe.  As much as I love weddings, the dress fittings and planners could wait.. for brunch.

[Apologies for the odd focus on this shot - I hadn't figured out my new camera yet!]

I found Miss Shirley’s through trusty Yelp (come say hi: ohmyomiyage.yelp.com).  It’s within walking distance to the touristy attractions of beautiful Inner Harbor, and the menu includes southern staples and Baltimore specialties like my personal favorite – crab.  We couldn’t resist the crab cake eggs benedict served on top of fried green tomatoes and the seafood caesar salad with lump crab meat and blackened shrimp and salmon.  Let me tell you – it was a LOT of mouth-watering food.

The early lunch crowd is filled with mostly professionals from the surrounding area, but around 1pm, the space changes to families and ladies who luncheon.  It’s a few minute walk away from the main tourist area so that may be why I didn’t see many tourists like us.  After satisfying our stomachs, we took a short stroll around Inner Harbor to shake the food down.

I wish I had more time in the area – the sun was shining, and the architecture is really beautiful.  Even so, it was the perfect Baltimore welcome.

Love southern food and crab?  Check out these posts too:

Kanazawa Maimon Sushi

Fat Matt’s Rib Shack

A weekend in Sapporo

Now when it comes to cooking a Kaiseki meal, be warned and be prepared with lots of hard work – as mentioned, the level of detail is exceptionally important! This time, we’re doing a ‘Aki no kaiseki‘ which literally means Kaiseki of Autumn.

If you really think about the scenes of an autumn day, it’s full of earthy colours, leaves and nuts, corns and a lot of brown factors! Our first dish involves mimicking the beautiful scene of Autumn.

Sakizuke (appetiser)  – “Fukiyose” – grilled prawn with mayo, persimmon in white tofu dressing, sweet potato “chestnuts” , fried ginko nuts, autumn leaves potato chips, soba pine needles, red- fish in shiokoji wrapped in bamboo leaf.

This is just a beautiful piece of art  – edible art! The pottery plate looks amazing that it brings that extra ‘boost’ to the entire dish! And not to mention, that this elegant dish cost 1800 AUD :S

The second dish  is a ‘wanmono’, generally a nice simple (but not too simple) soup - seasonal mushroom tofu broth with a touch of yuzu!

And to add on top of that – how can you serve Japanese meal without sashimi – This time we have the best juiciest tuna belly ever! ‘Mukozuke’ –   tuna Sashimi – when it comes to a Kaiseki meal, the dish must look elegant where food needs to be arranged in a certain way, a typical imagination is a Japanese garden – when it comes to sashimi plating!

I love deep-fries  – and this time, our yakimono is a nicely minced crab cake in almond flakes with lots of flavours! To make it even better, we served with fresh lime juice!

Now, here comes my favourite dish – DUCK! I cannot say enough how much I love eating duck – it is the most delicious ‘meat’ I’ve had – and this time, we’ve made an extremely nice thick Dashi-soy sauce-sake sauce! This is definitely a beautiful autumn dish! This is a takiawase dish- simmered duck with shiitake.

Last by not least – the staple for most Asian – including the Japanese, we have a nice chestnut and bonsai potato (or yam) steamed rice. It is a perfect finish to the entire meal!

Note: The purpose of this post is to showcase some of the beautiful dishes made in the class. Recipes are copyright and will not be post here, so please do not ask for recipes. For more information, please contact me via a comment in the comment box below.

Cooking Class from Kei’s Kitchen

• 1 (10 3/4 oz.) can cream of asparagus soup
• 1 (10 3/4 oz.) can of mushroom soup
• 1/4 c milk
• 1/4 c half and half
• 1/2 lb. crab meat
• 1/4 c dry sherry

Combine soups, milk, half and half, crab meat and sherry in heavy saucepan and bring to gentle boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for five minutes.

Presentation:  Serve in soup bowl with a sprinkle of crab meat and chopped parsley, have a splash of sherry available on table. Also you can top with toasted croutons or french bread rounds.

Use good quality Blue Crab Meat!

Located at Baltimore Washington International Airport (BWI) is Callinectes Douglassi, a 500-pound blue crab made from stained glass by artist Jackie Leatherbury Douglass and her husband John in 1984.

The 10 ft x 7 ft x 5 ft (3 x 2 x 1.5 meter) sculpture took over 5,500 man hours over a 14-month period to build. The stained glass blue crab weighs roughly 500 pounds.

The sculpture was commissioned by Anne Arudnel County. As one of Maryland’s state symbols, the blue crab was an obvious choice. According to the Baltimore Sun:

“With 550 miles of heavily crabbed waterfront, and a capital city known as Crabtowne, a newspaper nicknamed the Crab-wrapper… the crab is our most ubiquitous seafood… No creature is more deeply embedded in the bay region’s economy, culture and ecology.”

[Sources: The Baltimore Sun, Elvert Barnes on ipernity]

I’m so excited to announce that my work is available at Sea Green Gallery! It’s my first gallery at the beach, and what a cute little gallery it is! They feature worldly handmade goods with a repurposed theme. I’m also super pumped about the collection that they’ve chosen to showcase… it’s a collection of sea critters on repurposed papers. If you’re in town – go by, check it out and let me know what you think!

Now on to my next project…

I was standing on the beach taking pictures of a ruddy turnstone when the long-billed curlew flew right in front of me.

I never get this lucky. He was looking at me like “I’m ready for my photo shoot.”

He already had sand all the way up his beak so he’s been feeding.

I sat down on the sand and watched him dig.

Success.  A little sandy crab came out of the hole.

After swallowing that one, he continued to dig.

This one he flipped up in the air like popcorn shrimp.

Still digging. What a pig!

He seemed to want to show me this one up close. He started walking toward me with it in his beak.

He flipped it up to swallow it. After this crab, he started wandering off down the beach so I left him to his feeding.

This ruddy turnstone wanted to get in on the crab action as well. He walked right in front of me showing off his prize.

Another Saturday morning on Fort Desoto beach.

Crab cakes are one of America’s most popular seafood delicacies. They are simply mind blowing and they can rock your evening. They are known to taste their best when they are savored with buns and rolls. All you need to know is the art of cooking them right.

Image Source: bit.ly/13kImWg

The first thing that you must take into consideration is that you choose high quality ingredients. This will help your crab cake taste well. Again, try to purchase good crab meat instead of the frozen one. It might however be a difficult task for you if you are not living in close proximity to the sea. Then you have no other option but to go for frozen crab cakes. It is being said that frozen crabs do not mix well with the ingredients for making good recipes on crab cakes.

The most common choices of canned meat for making crab cakes are lump and special lump. They come with small pieces of meat that blend very well with the ingredients. They also help the cake hold tight together. It however is important for you to know that although you can find canned crab meat easily, it tastes a little salty. It therefore is always advised to rinse the meat very well prior to cooking. This ensures that all the salt is washed away.

Now the question that comes is that how to make crab cakes that actually taste like crab? Well, you need to be extremely careful while you prepare these delicate seafood stuffs. These cakes are extremely delicate and can break down quite easily. Therefore, you need to very gently handle the meat and thoroughly blend all the ingredients. Once this is done, you need to very carefully fold the crab into the mixture very carefully.

Image Source: bit.ly/12A8JbW

After this blending is done, you need to make sure that the ingredients remain united so that it forms a perfect ball like shape. You can also add another egg or some milk to prevent the crab cakes from falling apart. Finally, form the cakes in a round ball and then start cooking the side one after the other.

Now that you know how to make crab cakes that actually taste like crab it is time for you to try crab cakes at homes and invite your friends over for dinner.

Fresh Strawberries Crepe – Frodo Joe’s

Dessert crepe with strawberry slices and nutella drizzle on top, vanilla ice cream on the side, $6.95. Unfortunately, the ice cream melted while I sat in traffic. I ordered to go and considered eating the ice cream first, but it tastes better with the crepe, and I didn’t have time to eat the crepe. Couldn’t even eat the ice cream in the car because it had already started to melt and I didn’t want to get the car seats all sticky. Besides, I was sadly only given a fork, not a spoon. Oh, what a dilemma I had! I slurped up what little remaining ice cream I had when I finally had time to stop and eat. It starts as a mound/scoop, ended as a puddle in my to go tray. Sigh. The crepe was good though.

Seafood Delight

Savory crepe with shrimp, crab, an mozzarella cheese – includes cold salad, house salad, or soup on the side, $8.95. Salad was bleh. Crepe was okay, nothing to boast about. It had lots of little shrimp, most likely the frozen kind. I prefer larger, fresh shrimp. Also, too dry for my liking.

Seafood Noodle Soup – Basil Leaf

Combination of shrimp, squid, crab meat, fried fish cake, and fish balls, $8.25. Honestly, every time I come here, the portions are so skimpy. What you see at the surface of the bowl is essentially all there is. Don’t bother digging around underneath because you won’t find any more seafood. Even the amount of pho isn’t much. The seafood is bland. Gotta add a ton of Sriracha.

Strawberry Smoothie

At least I can count on the drink to taste good.

Alex DeMetrick reports it also means fewer crabs making it to market.

How fat or lean a crab harvest is is predicted each year by a survey done throughout the Chesapeake. Especially important are the baby, or juvenile crabs, which will grow to market size by summer. But this year…

“The crab population dropped substantially, by more than 50%, and what that means is there are fewer crabs to fish on,” said Lynn Fegley, DNR Fisheries.

In 2012, the survey found a population of 765 million, but that number dropped to 300 million this year. The biggest decline was in juveniles, from 581 million to 111 million.

“And it’s the abundance of those baby crabs that really drives the population each year,” Fegley said.

[worldnow id=8877706 width=385 height=288 type=video]

That’s forced Maryland and Virginia to impose new restrictions on catching female crabs. Rules already limit that catch but an additional 10% reduction is now in play.

“Science says we need a reduction. That’s what we have to go by. The problem I have with it is whether the science is good enough,” said waterman Bob Evans.

Evans is a waterman who thinks too much emphasis is placed on the juvenile count.

“And those tiny crabs, most of those get eat up by predators before they grow anyway, so you can’t ever go by how many little crabs you have,” Evans said.

That reduced female harvest will hit hardest in late summer and fall, when females are the primary catch for many watermen—money they won’t be hauling in.

The restrictions on females is to keep as many as possible in the bay to spawn next year’s young.

Stone Crab Claws – served simply chilled. Is there any other way to serve this? Why mess with nature’s bounty? If you’ve always wanted to partake in this seasonal delicacy and do not want step foot in the high end establishments who demand your first born, then here is the place to go wild. Prices are significantly lower. The is an unparalleled sweet, delicate, clean, tenderness in stone crab claws.

Lobster – steamed. There is no other primal act of feasting than with your hands. This is where you grab a lobster by the neck literally and wring it. Don’t worry, everyone else around you is eating with their hands and toes. It is perfectly acceptable here to split open a lobster head and suck out all the goodness. If juices fly, don’t worry about it, because the person next to you may spill also.

Garlic Shrimps and Clams – steamed. These clams flew under the radar. By the time I decimated a lobster, the clams were gone. Easy trade off. IT does not get any fresher than this.

Red Skinned Potatoes – these were precooked and served as ordered. Microwave ovens are provided in the store to nuke ‘em. Soft and tender.

Corn on the Cobb – precooked and served as ordered. Nuke at your own risk in the store. Nicely seasoned with garlic a light dousing of spices.

According to their Facebook page, live blue crabs were arriving at a certain time. Would you believe at that time, there was a mad rush of people arriving and waiting in line? It is never a disappointment going here. Be prepared to get dirty and walk with anything else you might need.

Go see my full set of 33 pictures on Flickr.

It was made a hell of a lot easier by knowing our team was going out to lunch at Public and a good friend was starting back after maternity leave. Yay!

So my verdict on Public? Can you say delicious?? Wow. My highlights were the wasabi squid, saltbush lamb, salt n vinegar fries and the beef brisket tortillas. Awesome Tuesday.

Back to workouts. CrossFit has introduced me to a whole new level of exhaustion. I think it is great for my running and long distance, even just to build up the mental strength to just keep going.

I am completely hooked and now don’t know how I am going to fit my running in. Although we did a bit of that today.

The work out was a 1000 m row, 800 m run, 50 full sit ups, 400 m run, 50 kettle bell swings and 50 deadlifts. Then one final deadlift at maximum capacity. I managed 45kg. Not bad for my first shot. Wimpy compared to the rest!

Yesterday was also super fun and involved as many reps in ten minutes of hang power cleans, one jerk, 10 box jumps (I did step ups). Then another round of 8 toes to bar, 2 wall climbs and 20 double unders (skipping in my case).

It is so varied, fun and totally exhausting!!! My arms feel so heavy! My core has never had a workout like it. And weirdly my armpits are sore? Not entirely sure they’re meant to be! In any case, I am addicted. I really must get some running in though.

I finally got my results for the Mother’s Day Classic and I scored a Personal Best! I ran the fastest I ever have with an average of 5.58 per km!!!!! I finished the 8km in 47.46 minutes. In November last year my average pace was 6.29 per km! I am so thrilled. This is why I need to fit in running!

The best part of today is Puppy finally got her cone head hat off! Well actually, she tore it off while we were at work. Then bit off the part that attaches to her collar to ensure cone could never fit back on!

But she also got the OK from vet so it is totally fine she managed to get it off. I’m surprised she lasted this long actually. Her patience has been wearing thin.

She is deliriously happy. Ecstatic in fact. When home from the vet she ran through the house and forgot to hit the brakes when she jumped on the bed and proceeded to fly off the other side.

Happy hats off day!

Then there are the pairs that we sort of forget about, until they saunter up side-by-side and slap us on the chin. Like crab and avocado.

Every time I eat avocado and crab together, I’m freshly amazed at how well they get along. Something about the creamy, fruity richness of the avocado makes it an ideal pair for sweet stringy crab. Not long ago, I had a salad at a business lunch that reminded me, again, of how great they are together. Like most of my crab-and-avocado encounters, it kept the two separate: a pile of crabmeat, a fan of avocado slices, lettuce, and vinaigrette. No more than that. I ate, and my eyes rolled back in my head a little, and I made up my mind not to let the combination slip my mind again.

From there, I started thinking about a different kind of crab salad, the picnic and barbecue kind, bound together with mayonnaise and flecked with tiny vegetable bits. What if I replaced the mayonnaise with avocado? Would that even work?

The short answer is, yes. Absolutely. A perfectly ripe avocado, mashed ferociously with a whisk, makes a fine mayonnaise substitute, and infuses every bite of the crab salad with buttery flavor. I tossed in the chopped-up leftover vegetables from my gazpacho experiment, and spiked the whole thing with plenty of hot sauce. (Next time, I think I’ll use a green pepper rather than red, for more of a bitter bite against the rich avocado and sweet crab.) The salad tasted like a crabby guacamole, and cried out to be piled onto tortilla chips. I can only imagine how terrific this would be at a backyard barbecue in the summertime, with plenty of cold drinks and good friends close at hand.

Avocado Crab Salad (serves 4-6 as an appetizer or party snack)

Note: See those hefty chunks of vegetables in the photo? Those are too big. I got lazy and didn’t want to dice much finer, but you really need to break them down small if you want that pleasant smooth-crunch-smooth texture of a good crab salad. Dice the veggies as finely as you can.

1 ripe avocado, halved and pitted

Zest and juice of 1 lime (about 2 tsp of each)

8 oz (about 1 cup) jumbo lump crab meat, picked over for shell fragments

1/2 English (seedless) cucumber, finely diced

1/2 medium red or green bell pepper, seeded and finely diced

2 scallions, thinly sliced

Tabasco or other hot sauce to taste

Salt to taste

Squeeze the avocado out of its skin and into a medium mixing bowl. Add lime juice and zest, and use a whisk to beat the mixture until creamy and almost smooth (a few lumps are fine). Add crab meat, cucumber, bell pepper, scallions, hot sauce, and salt, and stir to combine. Serve immediately, or cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to a day.

We were greeted with a warm welcome and brought into the very modern and light dining room. Their menu is divided into a set menu, (2 courses for £20, 3 for £25) and the ala carte menu with starters,  from the josper (meat and fish), mains and desserts. We decided on 2 courses from the set menu – the crisp dry cure bacon, poached egg, fine bean, frisee and mustard dressing, Bridlington crab on toast and mayonnaise to start with then the roast ‘ginger pig’, served pink with Yorkshire pudding, classic garnish and ale gravy. A bottle of soave to wash it all down with was ordered.

Bread rolls just out of the oven were brought over with lovely salted butter and then our starters arrived 5 minutes later.

Crisp dry cure bacon, poached egg, fine bean, frisee, mustard dressing

Bridlington crab on toast, mayonnaise.

The crab on toast was very tasty, whereas my dry cured bacon and poached egg was nice, but unfortunately my egg was a little under cooked. When cutting into the egg expecting a lovely runny yolk I found a very watery white ran all over the bacon and salad leaves making them a little soggy and altering the taste of the dish.

I was hoping that the main course would be better than the starters and luckily it was.

Roast ‘ginger pig’ beef, Yorkshire pudding, classic garnish, ale gravy

The waiter told us that the carrots had been cooked in cointreau and orange and the gravy was made with Tadcaster brewery ale. The beef was delicious, cooked to perfection and pink as requested. The carrots had a very faint taste of orange and were very nice, not too soft. The roast potatoes were good, I’m more of a mash girl (don’t kill me, we all have our preferences), but they were also very good and the Yorkshire pudding which is often the test of a good roast was decent. The ale gravy was very tasty and had a very subtle flavour of ale in it, nothing to offend anyone. On the whole a satisfying Sunday roast.

I was too full to even contemplate a dessert, but did indulge in some cocktails…a cosmopolitan, while my friend ordered a espresso martini. Both were very yummy indeed!!!

Cosmopolitan

Espresso martini

In total the bill was £147.95 for 3 people, this included a tip. Even though we had a bottle of wine and cocktails too, I feel it was a little overpriced (in particular for the cocktails). That said, the service was very good and couldn’t be faulted, I’d like to come back again to try their ala carte menu next time.

Last night I was in the mood for a light salad and found the recipe for a Crab and Avocado Salad. Yum! Although the dressing (soy yoghurt, mayonnaise, basil, chives, anchovies and lemon juice) was delicious on its own, the salad as a whole was a bit on the bland side. I will possibly make this salad again, but with a few more spices and maybe with the addition of garlic.

Base of the salad: Romaine, green beans, and avocado mixed with the dressing.

The salad topping: Crab, avocado, and dressing

After having Alaskan King Crab last night for Mothers Day dinner this is what I am making with the leftovers…. even if I only have 9 ounces!!!

Sharing this from a Face Book post from Carol Okutman Lind.

INGREDIENTS:
1 large egg
2½ tablespoons mayonnaise (I like Hellman’s Real)
1½ teaspoons Dijon mustard (I like Maille brand)
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon Old Bay seasoning
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup finely diced celery (you’ll need one stalk)
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley
1 pound lump crab meat*
½ cup panko (I like the Whole Foods 365 brand for this recipe)
Canola oil

DIRECTIONS:
1. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil.

2. Combine the egg, mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, Worcestershire, Old Bay, salt, celery, and parsley in a large bowl and mix well. Add the crab meat (be sure to check the meat for any hard and sharp cartilage) and panko; gently fold mixture together until just combined, being careful not to shred the crab meat. Shape into 6 crab cakes (about ½ cup each) and place on prepared baking sheet. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

3. Preheat a large nonstick pan to medium heat and coat with canola oil. When oil is hot, place crab cakes in pan and cook until golden brown, about 3-5 minutes per side. Be careful as oil may splatter. Serve immediately with tartar sauce or a squeeze of lemon.

Quick Tartar Sauce

Ingredients:
1 cup mayonnaise
1½ tablespoons sweet pickle relish
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon minced red onion
1-2 tablespoons lemon juice, to taste
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Directions:
Mix all ingredients together in a small bowl. Cover and chill until ready to serve.

Another news flash: there is not really good Asian food in the South. At least where I am. Certainly in some of the larger metropolitan areas you can find some good hole-in-the-wall restaurants; I would suspect also that some of the coastal cities of the South would have decent sushi, etc. But being brutally honest, as a general rule eating at (say) a Chinese restaurant in the South is about as smart of an idea as eating at a sushi restaurant in Tucson. You don’t even want to THINK about where they get their produce.

With that wonderful introduction, I now present a recipe for crab wontons. Let’s not pretend these are authentic–this recipe is admittedly more along the lines of an appetizer at P.F. Chang’s…maybe with a dash of Paula Deen. Despite being fried, with few exceptions this dish probably is as “light” as it gets. First, for various reasons you do not want to over-fry crab or cream cheese. Second, wonton skins are a helluva less heavy than, say, fried chicken breading.

CRAB WONTONS

INGREDIENTS (makes approx. 40 wontons):

• Half of a bell pepper
• Two green onions
• One package (8 ounces) of lite cream cheese, softened
• One can (8 ounces) of crab meat
• One package wonton skins
• Water
• Oil for frying

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Dice the bell pepper and green onions finely.
   
2. Put the chopped veggies in a bowl with the softened cream cheese and crab meat. Mix well.
   
3. To fill the wontons:
   1. Place a small bit of the filling in the center of the skin.

      

   2. Dip your finger in water and coat the outside edges of the skins.
   3. Fold so that none of the mixture could fall out.

      

   4. Set aside.
      

      You can fold them into little rectangles…

      

      or squares…

       

4. When the oil is hot enough (usually you want it to be around 350*F), drop the wontons in batches of 4-6. They will float to the top. Flip them occasionally for even cooking.
   
5. Place cooked wontons on a paper-towel lined bowl/plate to shake off excess grease. Serve hot.
   

This morning I walked right to the end of Lamae beach (where I live) as I haven’t really seen it properly. I like it here; it’s wild and woolly with palm trees and tufts of grass everywhere. It’s so wild that (another) pack of dogs were scrapping and marking their territory. One had 3 legs so I called him hop-a-long, but he was the most vicious of the lot. You’d think he’d give it up seeing as he’s at a disadvantage, but no. Maybe that’s why; even dogs have something to prove sometimes. In the distance by the sea, a dog was gnawing on a crab he’d found. Good beach combing session for him then.

We biked out again today and I was feeling a little cocky…That is until I fell off. No harm done apart from bruised confidence and a little cut (my first bike tattoo!) We found a beautiful river near Langsuan where monkeys were monkeying around in the trees i.e. kicking the shit out of each another.  We were finding all kinds of bridges leading into tiny villages with shacks on the roadsides. Thai’s were shouting ‘Hello’ and waving at us as we roamed past; I’m guessing we’re a bit of a novelty round these parts. I also had to go to the loo ‘al fresco’, but that my friends, is another story.

doggins gnawing on his crab

dishevelled bike pic…and if you look really closely at my knee, you can see the Thai cut!

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Mww_XVU1s

So this is the end result of the spring salmon. I started to dry my salmon as of last year when I got my first spring of the season (2012). Normally i don’t keep spring salmon because the thought of consuming all that salmon is just not possible for us. But ever since I got a dehydrator, it’s an endless possibility of recipes. Here is something I recommended to Hook.

Salmon crushed up with a bit of Japanese mayo on a toasted bread. You can also substitute the mayo with any other sauce that you prefer. I normally like it a bit spicy so a few drops of Tabasco with my mayo. But it also works quite well with salad and it seems to be a more substantial meal in my opinion. But my kids love to eat it the way it is. A health choice for recess and after school.