Tag: Maryland

Collaborative Effort: Crabcake Egg Rolls With Spicy Pineapple Dipping Sauce

Crabcake egg rolls in collaboration with spicy pineapple dipping sauce. And yes, my crabcake recipe is the best one. #IYDKNYK

Collaboration is a funny thing. Everyone claims to want to do it, but in reality, the bare fact of working with another person to create something together is infinitely challenging. This applies to everything from creative work to child-rearing; it seems as if in collaboration, there is always the potential for someone to feel like they have not been heard, respected, or valued in a partnership.

KWeeks and I are trying to feel our way into creative collaboration. It makes sense that this is a step we would take. Even if our respective creative practices are quite different, many of our sensibilities align, and where they don’t it’s possible to find some fertile ground.

Our first “collaboration,” of sorts, was building a camping platform in New Brunswick, Canada – a bit of a struggle until we figured out that one person needed to be in charge each day. In the end, the final product is something we are both proud of, even if the road to it was sometimes rough.

And now we are feeling our way towards a new collaboration, a creative one, that is embryonic and still being negotiated and not even more than something ethereal. It feels good to think this way, in love and creative partnership with my person. I am most grounded when I have found a home in someone, and KWeeks feels like that.

The idea of “home” comes up frequently in our conversations. KWeeks isn’t exactly nomadic, but he has managed to move at specific times in his life in a way that prevented him from ever feeling too attached to one place.

I, on the other hand, spent the first 25 years of my life in Maryland. I camped every summer in Assateague and roamed the mountains in western Maryland for my formative years. I am attached to this region in a way that is cellular, and much of this is grounded in food of this region, particularly the beautiful swimmers – Maryland blue crab.

It has been two years since I have had crab, and those who know know that fall crab is the best, fatter than the lean crabs of spring and early summer. Years ago, right around this time, I did what was long overdue and created my own crabcake recipe in the form of Maryland Crabcakes With Green Papaya, Carrot, and Jicama Slaw With Pineapple Vinaigrette.

This past weekend, KWeeks and I had a brief sojourn at John Cage Memorial Park in Chance, Maryland, continuing to feel our way towards a potential collaborative project. We picked up two pounds of jumbo lump crab from a roadside stand called How Sweet It Is on the way home, and this recipe is a result of that sweet, delectable bounty from the Chesapeake.

Eating these crabcake egg rolls is a bit like coming home for me – sweet, fresh crab barely held together with minimal binding and just a hint of Old Bay, wrapped in a gluten-free rice wrapper and fried. The spicy sweetness of pineapple and chili complement the crab and the crispy wrapper.

Ultimately, the goal in this life (and the search for home in food, in people, and in place) seems best summed up in a quote from John cage himself:

“Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.”

Crabcake Egg Rolls With Spicy Pineapple Sauce

(makes 10 spring rolls)

Khristian – not a native Marylander but a smart man nonetheless – reminds me that your crabcakes are only as good as your crab. Make every effort to find local crab, caught in the Bay and picked on the Shore. You’ll be very glad you did.

Ingredients

2 teaspoon Old Bay

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 slice bread without crusts, torn into small bits (see Recipe Notes)

1 tablespoon mayonnaise

1 egg

1 pound jumbo lump crab

10 spring roll wrappers (rice)

½ cup fresh pineapple

½ cup chili garlic sauce (see Recipe Notes)

¼ cup water

Method

Start with the crabcake mixture. You can make this a day ahead if you like, but fresh is best.

Combine Old Bay, parsley, mustard, bread, mayonnaise, and egg in a large bowl. Stir well to combine.

Add crabmeat and mix with your hands very, very gently until the mixture is completely combined. Keep in ‘fridge until ready to make the spring rolls.

For the sauce, combine fresh pineapple, chili sauce, and water in a saucepan. Heat to a simmer, then pop in a blender and blend until smooth. Set aside.

There are multiple ways to fry these. If you have one of those countertop fryers, have at it, and follow the directions for that.

I used a wide, straight-sided saucepan and about two inches of oil. If you are following this method, use a splatter guard, and heat your oil to 350 degrees before you fry.

While your oil is heating, prepare the spring rolls.

FULL DISCLOSURE: My technique SUCKS. It’s ok, because I don’t do this very often (fried or unfried spring rolls), but the more you do it, the better your results will be. So practice by making lots and lots of these.

Grab a wide bowl of hot water. Place the spring roll wrapper in the hot water until it softens – probably not more than 30 seconds. Lay the wrapper on a flat surface, and spoon a generous two tablespoons of the crab just inside the edge closest to you. Roll away from yourself once, fold in the sides, then continue rolling. Tight spring rolls = less chance of bursting and more even browning.

Keep rolling until all the crab is used. Don’t let the spring rolls touch each other while they wait for the frying pan – they will stick and tear each other and then you’ll just have to eat crabcakes.

When your oil is ready, slip spring rolls into their bath, only as many as you can fry at once without them touching. Fry for about five to seven minutes total – until the outside is golden brown.

Remove to a plate covered with paper towels and allow to drain.

Serve HOT, with spicy pineapple sauce on the side.

Recipe Notes

Real Maryland crabcakes use white bread or saltines as a binder. I am a born-and-bred Marylander who happens to be gluten-free, so I used gluten-free bread, and it worked just fine.

You could definitely get high-tech and make your own chili garlic sauce. I chose to leave that to the professionals and used Huy Fong Chili Garlic Sauce, which is delicious and perfect.

Local Ingredients: Your Own Personal Hominy

You totally want this. For real.
You totally want this. For real.

Let’s talk about hominy, y’all.

My past perception of this humble little nugget was simple: a little trashy, a little low-rent, a little flavorless.

In short, I was a total douche about this particular ingredient.

Why?

Who knows?

As a quote from a long-forgotten character in a novel whose name I also forget said, “Sometimes it bees that way.”

But I digress. Point is, I was a snob about this humble little kernel of corn for no good reason.

That perception changed with a recent birthday dinner for my particular friend at Woodberry Kitchen.

My particular friend is a vegetarian who has been flirting with the idea of fish for quite some time. Although both of us believe that vegetarians can get plenty of plant-based protein, thankyouverymuch, there comes a time when it is simply easier to get animal-based protein (like, say, eating out).

Plus, fish is DELICIOUS.

So he figured that he would give fish another go at Woodberry, which, if I am being honest (as I always try to be), is potentially the best place to try anything new for the first time because Spike Gjerde and his brigade is the bees’ knees and you know whatever you order is going to be delicious.

So my particular friend ordered seared Maryland rockfish on a bed of hominy (among other things) and OH MY GOD.

Seriously.

That shit was good. Like, plate-mopping-with-homemade-bread-good. Eat-real-slow-to-make-it-last good.

Since that dinner I have become mildly obsessed with hominy. The word itself has been bumping around in my brain and, no lie, I had dreams about it once last week. I gave in and did some research then headed to the kitchen.

Hominy is basically corn that has had a good, long soak in a bath of something lime-y. In some applications, that bath is lye, which is tremendously terrible for you to actually eat and which this blog can absolutely not get behind. Lutefisk be damned – lye is not what you should be putting in your body.

In other cases, that bath is some mixture of wood ash and lime. Still sounds pretty scary. I like local, and since dried hominy was not available IMMEDIATELY (which is when I like things to be available), I picked up a can of Manning’s Hominy from the local Giant. Since nobody really knows what hominy is (except for Spike Gjerde, bless his heart), I wandered up and down the aisles until I reached that thin sliver of overlap that is “soul food” and “Hispanic food” in Giant.

It’s a thin sliver, but it exists. I should have taken a picture.

Manning’s Hominy has a Baltimore history and remains local to this day. It also happens to be the name of the road we used to live on in Georgia. #Destiny

Plus, bonus: it is steam-peeled and no additives (like lye) are included.

So I accidentally picked up this can of local hominy because truthfully it was the first one I saw in that little sliver of an aisle, and I just wanted to get my mitts on some of it to see what was what.

The contents of the can are patently unappetizing. The hominy is ghost-white and covered with slimy mush; the contents are “congealed” as the can itself says, and no one wants to hear “congealed” in  conjunction for what they are about to eat.

Pressing on, I used a fork to separate the little kernels and proceeded to prepare it two ways: toasted and served with Maryland rockfish (thanks, Spike) and roasted fennel, tomatoes and oil-cured olives (pictured above); and in a roasted chicken and hominy stew.

The corn flavor is subtle in both dishes, but the texture of the hominy adds something that is difficult to describe. It’s chewy without being sticky, and when toasted (it actually pops in the oven, which is unfortunate as my oven ceiling is now somewhat covered in hominy) it gets a nutty flavor that deepens the longer it cooks.

Dried out, it’s like Corn-Nuts, which are far too crunchy for their own good (plus too loud, which for someone who has misophonia like me is a nightmare).

Slowly simmered in stew, hominy picks up all of the flavors of the stew while still retaining its innate corn-ness.

SOLD.

Pictured above is one of  two specials using hominy in  this week’s dinner line-up.

They are both delicious, and you should definitely order them if you live in Baltimore, but this blog is not about that even though it sounds like a straight-up advertisement.

I love you too much for that.

This blog is really about the stupid preconceived notions that we hold on to for no apparent reason. This one has to do with food, but if you think really hard I bet there are other things you believe that you can’t even identify why you believe them.

Food is a powerful belief system tied to its role in our lives growing up, but other things – politics, sex, relationships, for example – are no less powerful examples of how we cling stubbornly to something because “sometimes it bees that way.”

Something as simple as tasting hominy – this humble little kernel of corn – after dismissing it for so many years makes me think about what else I have dismissed for no reason. What else have I written off? Who else have I dismissed?

What have you cast aside for reasons you can’t name? What is your own personal hominy?