Good morning Baltimore!

My eldest sister came home from Baltimore recently, and was thoughtful enough to bring me back some Old Bay spice. To celebrate her return, I stayed home and made crab cakes while she went out with her boyfriend. Keep in mind that prior to this night I had never seen a crab cake, much less eaten one. But, there was a recipe on the box of the spice so I thought I might as well try. And I’m glad I did, the recipe makes enough for three and was delicious. Clearly, it is unreasonable to expect everyone to have an obscure brand of seasoning on hand, and this seems to be a combination of celery salt, red pepper, black pepper, and paprika. The recipe calls for parsley flakes, but we only had a little so I mostly used dried basil.

Adapted from the Old Bay box
Crab Cakes

2 slices bread, un-toasted
2 tbsp mayonnaise
2 tsp Old Bay seasoning
2 tsp parsley flakes
1 egg beaten
1 lb crab meat
½ tsp Dijon mustard

Break bread into small pieces, or get someone to do it for you (as seen below). Combine in bowl with everything but crab. Stir in the crab meat (I used one can and didn’t actually weight it), and shape into small patties about 1.5 inches in diameter. Place on baking sheet, un-greased, like your making cookies, and broil for 10 minutes. We served it with corn and I’d recommend tartar or cocktail sauce.

I have no idea if these are what crab cakes are supposed to be like, but I do know they were good.

Tortillas purposely not storebought

In trying to convince my sister (and roommate) to switch grocery stores, her primary protest was that they didn’t sell tortillas. Which is of course a downside, but nothing that a quick search through the Homesick Texan’s blog couldn’t remedy. The recipe seemed simple enough, I already had all the ingredients and everything. Until of course, I realized that even after having my own kitchen for an entire year, I still don’t own a rolling pin.

I thought about using my pasta maker to roll it out, and have rectangle tortillas, but fortunately my friend Ilana was stopping by to deliver my third(!!!) birthday cake of the week, and I convinced to come over for dinner and bring by her rolling pin.

I thought about using my pasta maker to roll it out, and have rectangle tortillas, but fortunately my friend Ilana was stopping by to deliver my third(!!!) birthday cake of the wake, and I convinced to come over for dinner and bring by her rolling pin.

Adapted from the Homesick Texan

Whole Wheat Tortillas

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder

1 teaspoon of salt

2 teaspoons of canola oil

3/4 and 1 tablespoon cups of warm milk

Makes 8 tortillas on the small side

Mix everything but milk together, and then slowly mix in warm milk (it was never thin enough to really whisk so I just used my hands). Knead for two minutes, dough should be pretty firm and pliable. Place in bowl and cover with damp cloth for twenty minutes.

Break dough into eight balls, and then cover those for an additional ten minutes. Roll out each ball and cook it on a skillet heated to high for about 30 seconds on each side. As you can see, my first try I forgot to constantly stand over it and it got pretty burnt, but was still awesome.

These were pretty irregularly shaped, but that is much more my inability to roll out dough than any fault on the recipe. On the whole, wonderful. I made myself a sort of quesadilla with mozzarella and sprinkled basil, oregano, rosemary, and parsley on it. My sister Alli and Ilana made traditional tacos.