"CrabCakes" news and stories

• It's still summer. Homemade pops, anyone?
• Waterloo & City puts the fringes of Culver City on the dining map.
• There's dinner theater -- and then there's when dinner becomes theater.
• Got a crabcake emergency? No worries.

Green tomatoes. Photo: pink_fish13, Flickr.

• Green tomatoes can become a delicious late-summer soup.
• A look at the food and fine dining of Portland, Maine, as it -- brace yourself -- gears up for frost and winter.
• At the living museum Strawbery Banke in New Hampshire, Rosh Hashana is celebrated 1919-style.
• French Languedoc wines have improved greatly over the last 25 years.
• Michael Pollan writes an op-ed piece about eating and U.S. health care.
• Food editor and developer of products like Cran-Apple juice Sylvia Schur passes away at the age of 92.
• Recipe Redux goes back in time and whips up a Huguenot Torte from 1965.
• The foods that wowed when noted chefs David Kinch, Alexandre Gauthier, Pascal Barbot and Michel Bras got cookin' on Sept. 14.
• The Minimalist makes Thai-style crab cakes.
• The classic tourist spot Tavern on the Green files for bankruptcy -- a look into why it fell.
• Restaurants: Gus & Gabriel Gastropub "fails to achieve even its low aims," Stumptown Coffee Roasters whips up exceptional espresso and Queens' M & T Restaurant offers elegant simplicity and great eats.
• Food Stuff finds purr-worthy knives, a new food processor and apple cake.
• New York's openings and closings and dining calendar.

Crab cakes are a favorite food of many seafood lovers. They are made with crab meat that is bound together with a small amount of filler then fried (or baked) until crisp. There are a huge number of variations on the basic cake, but the most important ingredient is, of course, the crab. Summer is typically considered to be crab season, but thanks to frozen and imported meats, crab cakes are available to most people year-round. The question is not whether you can get them, but whether they are worth getting. The week, the Wall Street Journal's Catalogue critic asked that very question and taste-tested five kinds of mail-order crab cakes.

All the cakes had to be cooked at home before serving and all but one was shipped pre-formed. The top choices were Philips Seafood and Chesapeake Bay Crab Cakes and More, which came in first and second with only the narrowest of margins deciding the winner. Third place was the Cadillac Crab Cake Co., the company that shipped the crab cakes unformed in a "loaf," allowing you to shape them according to your preferences.

The biggest drawback is that not only are the cakes expensive, but shipping is pricey, too, so keep that in mind when you decide you want a crab cake or three in the dead of winter.

While crab cakes are far from my favorite food, they are something that most people love and you can never go wrong by making a batch for a group of friends. What constitutes the best, or the ultimate, crab cake is a topic of serious discussion among connoisseurs. Bread crumbs or not? Broiled or fried? I Love Crab cakes contains dozens of recipes for crab cakes, examining variations that you might never have considered. Does it answer the question of the ultimate crab cake? Not exactly. Personal preference varies too much to pick one recipe out among the rest, but you are pretty much guaranteed to find at least one that strikes your fancy. You'll also learn the nuances of crab cake-making, a task that is not as difficult as you might think.

HarperCollins, the publisher, has two sample recipes on their website: Smoked Salmon Crab Cakes and Crab Cake Sandwich with Fennel Mayo.

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