Crab Cakes with Garlic Aioli

What could be better this time of year but the crab cake? Well, I am sure you could come up with many things such as barbecue, salads, and plenty more, but trust me, before you move to make those other things, try these crab cakes. These cakes pack a ton of flavor and are just too easy to make. Did I tell you that the aioli is to die for as well? Trust me, this combination is awesome

Serves 3
Prep time: less than 15 minutes
Cook time: 7-9 minutes

Crab Cake Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup of olive oil
• 5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 1 Onion, finely chopped
• 1 lb of lump crab meat
• 5 slices of bread, crusts cutoff, and processed through a food processor for breadcrumbs
• 1 egg white
• 2 tbs of mayonnaise
• handful of chopped, fresh cilantro
• 1/2 lime, juiced
• salt and pepper

Heat a large skillet with a couple of glugs of olive oil, roughly 3 tablespoons. Bring this to a light smoke, and add the garlic and onion. Cook this mixture down for roughly seven minutes. In the meantime, add your bread to a food processor and pulse this down to a nice fluffy breadcrumb. In a large bowl, combine the breadcrumbs, crabmeat, egg white, mayonnaise, cilantro, and lime juice, and cooked onion and garlic. Mix this until it is well blended, then season with salt and pepper. This is where it gets messy, and fun.

Take a handful of the mixture and form into a small hockey puck and place on a large plate. Continue this with the rest of the mixture. Now take your plate and put it in the freezer for a few minutes. The goal is to have the cakes firm up a bit before cooking them.

While the cakes are firming up, lets make the aioli. If you have never made aioli before, it is very similar to mayonnaise, but in my opinion, it is much better.

Aioli Ingredients:

• 1 lemon for juice
• 1/3 cup of olive oil
• 1/4 cup of sour cream
• 3 cloves of garlic, pureed
• 1/2 cup of mayonnaise
• Fresh ground black pepper
• Salt
• 1/2 tbs of celery seed

To make the garlic puree, take the garlic and mash it down. Now sprinkle a bit of course salt over the garlic and with the edge of your knife, begin massaging the garlic down to a paste. This process will take a few minutes, but is it ever worth it!

Now, in a bowl, add all of your ingredients, and mix really well. Stick this in the refrigerator until you are ready to plate the crab cakes.

Heat a large skillet with a 1/4 cup of olive oil. Bring this to a medium to high heat. Remove the cakes from the freezer and put as many cakes as you can fit, comfortably into the skillet. Once these are in, do not poke and prod at them, just let them cook for roughly 4 minutes on its side. When you are ready, get a thin spatula, and carefully flip over, cooking another 3 minutes. That’s it. Plate them up with a nice tossed salad, lemon wedges, and aioli on the side. Trust me, just trust me on this one.