Les Crevettes

Today, for the first time, I cooked healthy style shrimp and crab cakes. For all of you who voted in the poll, cooking something with shrimp was the clear winner. As I began searching for a recipe, I knew I wanted to cook something that was healthy and low calorie but also exciting and delicious. When I landed on the shrimp and crab cake recipe, I knew I had to try it.

The whole process was very trial and errror. I followed the recipe, which called for:

• 10 ounces raw shrimp, peeled, deveined and chopped
• 6 ounces flaked crabmeat, squeezed dry if necessary
• 1 large egg white, lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1/4 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon salt, preferably kosher
• 1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper
• 1/3 cup fine, unseasoned dry breadcrumbs
• 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil

(courtesy of www.eatingwell.com)

I used cooked shrimp instead of raw because I was at the grocery store too late so I couldn't order raw shrimp. After mixing all the ingredients together I found that the cakes weren't sticking together at all, so as I was trying to cover them with bread crumbs they completely fell apart. I decided to make half of them the way the recipe called, but add some light mayo and some extra bread crumbs to the other half of the batch.

Even with the added mayo, I was STILL having trouble getting the patties to stick together. I decided to give it one more shot, thinking that maybe I hadn't chopped everything up enough. I undid the patties and chopped everything much finer. To my elation, the patties were sticking!

In the end, each patty is about 240 calories rather than 176 like they should have been, but I am very happy with the result. Sure, it's not the low-calorie-yet-somehow-gourmet-tasting shrimp crabcake I was hoping for, but it's pretty damn good.

On a scale of 1-10 will I do this again: I give it a solid 6 for maybe. It's tasty, but it was a lot of work and I think I could make an even tastier and more convenient shrimp dish someday.

P.S. Check out the new poll!