Low Carb (mostly) Paleo Crab Cakes

Photo by MDGovpics

When you don't have a dishwasher or washing machine, and spend two hours of your day commuting, everything takes longer, so it's been awhile since I posted a recipe. I feel like I just don't have time to be creative like that lately... :( But today I am recovering from some sort of flu or something, and when I don't feel like lying around vegging out, I feel like writing something.


A few weeks ago, when I was feeling particularly energetic, I decided to make crab cakes. I jokingly call them "carb" cakes because most recipes are full of pretty carby ingredients that are added to hold the cake together. The traditional crab cake has crumbs of some sort, and the paleo ones have coconut flour or something like that--I needed a very low carb crab cake because that's what I need to do. It's low carb paleo all the way for me. So I started looking around, and miraculously, I found I was not the only one to try this.

The recipe I decided to try was this one at DJfoodie.com

I have no pictures, sadly, as my camera is slowly dying and it was not being cooperative that day. Next time I make them, I'll try to get some pictures for you, in the meantime, check out DJ's blog, because they did look just like his, (except not as thick.) And he has great pics! This recipe uses shrimp mousseline to bind the ingredients together.


Low Carb (mostly) Paleo Crab Cakes

Ingredients:

8 oz raw shrimp
1 large whole egg, chilled
1/2 cup pastured heavy cream
1 lb lump crab meat, drained
4 green onions, chopped finely
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 cup pine nuts chopped roughly
1/4 cup pastured butter
2 T. toasted sesame seeds
salt and fresh cracked pepper, to taste


I used my ordinary underpowered blender to make the mousseline, but first I chilled it for about 1/2 hour. DJ foodie says that mousseline needs to be made in a cold environment. Basically mousseline is just mayo with some sort of raw fish or meat as the base, and cream as the fat, so I added my shrimp to the food processor with a little salt and pepper, then plopped in the egg. Then I turned my blender on, and after I let it blend for a minute, I slowly drizzled in the pastured cream. I had to stop a couple of times because the paste that it created was so thick that I had to scrape down the sides a bit until it was all blended and perfect.

I carefully scraped all the mousseline into a bowl, and added the crab, green onions, smoked paprika, sesame seeds, and a little more salt and pepper. Then, I mixed it very thoroughly and set it in the fridge to chill for about 1/2 hour.

While it was chilling, I smashed my pine nuts into a crumbly dust with my mortar and pestle and poured them into a glass pie pan. Then I began to scoop out small balls of the crab mixture and form them into little patties. I used a soup spoon, and made little balls (about the size of a paleo truffle) then rolled them around them in the pine nut mixture to coat evenly. Then I flattened them so that they were more traditionally crab-cake-like, and set them on a chilled tray lined with parchment in the fridge. When I was done I had two trays worth but I neglected to count them...

While they were chilling, I pre-heated the oven to 350 F, and divided and melted the butter in two skillets. Then I browned them in batches over medium heat, flipping them after a couple of minutes, so that each side was nicely golden. Then, I baked them in the oven for another 10 minutes, let them cook, and served them with salad for dinner.

This recipe is a little complicated and time-consuming for someone who is a lazy cook with no dishwasher, but honestly, it was totally worth it. I ended up with (I think) around 40 mini crab cakes. That would put the carb count at about 1 gram per cake which seems pretty good to me. These were delicious! Obviously this recipe is not perfectly paleo due to the butter and cream, however, I suspect that you could make shrimp paste without adding the cream, and use it just as successfully. Nom Nom Paleo has a recipe for Shrimp Stuffed Mushrooms that includes a shrimp paste, that I might try next time when I feel like I have time to cook, and the pocketbook isn't so light. :)

As for the cost of this recipe, I got the shrimp, crab, and pine nuts at CostCo, everything else I already had around the house, so even though it is definitely not a "budget" meal, with salad and crab cakes just for me and M, it cost under $40 (including wine) and was just as good as a dinner out. And we had leftovers for breakfast. Seems like it would be about right for a Valentine's Day dinner...