Shellfish Individuals

Each week, I provide two recipes at this site. I call this week’s “Shellfish Individuals.” First things first: if you have a proven allergy to shellfish, or you think that with proper coaching you could develop one, skip the recipes this week. This chapter only tells you how to enjoy shellfish, not how to meet them on a level playing field, engage them in glorious battle and subsequently defeat them.

SEAFOOD CAKES (made with canned salmon, crab, clams, oysters or tuna): Serves four adults for whom this experience will be the closest they ever get to Louisiana, and perhaps the only time they'll ever say the word "bayou" without preceding it with "Let me just run something...."

Obviously, whichever main ingredient you choose to use (salmon or crab, for example) will determine the name of this meal, since calling something "seafood cakes" may make the already skeptical dinner guest assume you're using some sort of generic bottom-feeder combo, a kind of nautical liverwurst.

That doesn't mean you can't combine two or more of these canned foods into a single patty mixture. Tuna works with any of the others, but salmon can get overshadowed by oysters, particularly the smoked kind. You can also, almost as simply, make a separate mixture for each, and offer your guests a veritable offshore sampler. While the recipe presented here works well for any of the canned seafoods, you might want to try some subtle variations in the spicing, depending on whether you use salmon (which needs less salt than the others but can use a few extra shakes of dill and a little curry powder), oysters (which need a little more salt) or tuna (which benefits from a teaspoon or two of white vinegar).

You'll also find a variety of dressings below, which are easy to prepare and which your guests, having once read a Sunday magazine article called "Mealtime Madness at the Mardi Gras," will more or less demand.

Ingredients

• 10 to 15 oz. of canned clams, tuna, crabmeat or shrimp (or 10 to 15 oz., total, of all 4), packed in water or oil
• 2 or 3 eggs
• 2 cups of salted soda crackers, broken-up small but not quite crushed into dust
• parsley flakes
• garlic powder
• chili powder
• paprika
• dill (dried or fresh)
• chives, minced onions or finely chopped scallions
• curry powder (optional, but best with the salmon)
• salt (seasoned or regular)
• pepper
• basil flakes
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/4 cup olive oil

1. Pour the seafood, without its packing water or oil, into a bowl.

2. Break in the eggs, add the broken up crackers.

3. Add the seasonings.

4. Stir everything until it starts getting a doughy texture. If it seems only a little liquidy, don't worry; if its consistency is similar to chowder, however, you’ve ruined everything. (Nah. Just add some more broken up crackers and stir some more. Geez, chill out. It was a joke, all right?)

5. Cover the bowl and store it in the refrigerator for an hour or more.

6. When you're ready to make dinner, heat the oven to 200Ëš F or less and put in an ungreased cookie sheet. This will keep the cakes warm as you continue to fry more of them atop the stove.

7. Take the seafood cake mixture out of the refrigerator and form the cakes between your two clean human hands, over a separate bowl. The reason for the separate bowl is that there could still be some moisture in the cakes, and you want to drain them of as much liquid as possible, so that they stay together when you fry them.

8. When the cakes seem pretty solidly formed, flour them lightly, making sure to gently shake off any excess flour.

9. Heat the olive oil in a skillet. When the pan is hot, carefully slide in as many cakes as it will hold without them touching each other.

10. When the edges of each cake start to brown, turn each over with a spatula and fry the other side. You may need to carefully tamp down the cakes with the back of the spatula as they fry, to hold them together.

11. As each batch of cakes gets done, remove it to the cookie sheet. If you seem to be running out of oil in the skillet, add only another tablespoon at a time, and ad it very gingerly to avoid having the oil accord you the same treatment that acid vat accorded The Joker in Batman. (In fact, I'd recommend you splurge on the purchase of a spatter pan, a flat grease-catcher that looks like what Gumby might use to play jai alai, which fits over the top of most skillets. The life or T-shirt you save may be your own.)
Side Dishes: Garlic mashed potatoes, oven-roasted potatoes or rice; steamed asparagus with butter and lemon.

Sauces, no matter which cakes you make:

a. Peanut butter (or almond butter) and honey. Just as it sounds, equal parts of each, mixed as smooth as possible. Don't make in advance or store in the refrigerator, though.

b. Garlic mayonnaise. Put three tablespoons of mayonnaise (diet, regular or low-fat) in a bowl. Add a quarter teaspoon (or more, or less, depending on your tastes) of garlic powder, garlic puree or crushed garlic, and a dash of seasoned salt. Stir.

c. Daddy's nerve medicine (okay, cocktail) sauce. Put three tablespoons of ketchup, one tablespoon of white horseradish and a quarter teaspoon of white vinegar in a bowl. Stir.

Sauces best for crab cakes or salmon cakes:

a. How's bayou dressing. Put four tablespoons of ketchup, one tablespoon of mayonnaise, one teaspoon each of sherry and Tabasco sauce, and a hearty dash of basil flakes in a bowl, and stir. In a small saucepan, boil 1 cup of water and dissolve 1 chicken bouillon cube in it. After the cube has dissolved, turn the water off and let cool for 2 minutes. Carefully pour the liquid, a little at a time, into the bowl of other stuff, stirring the whole time with your other hand. Use only enough liquid to flavor and slightly moisten the sauce: you're going for a thick tomato sauce consistency (it may be necessary to add more mayonnaise to achieve this). Serve this sauce warm or slightly chilled (about 5 minutes worth of fridge time).

b. Roe v. staid (caviar) sauce. As you may know, you can buy pretty inexpensive caviar these days in most supermarkets or specialty stores. This sauce combines three heaping tablespoons of the roe — or faux roe, if you find some really inexpensive caviar — with one tablespoon of mayonnaise, a half teaspoon each of white horseradish and white vinegar, and a very modest shake of real bacon bits (optional; don't use if you think it'll overwhelm the taste of the caviar, unless you were so cheap that this is your intention).

c. Home for the Hollandaise (make-believe Hollandaise) sauce. Slowly heat a cup of mayonnaise in a saucepan, gently stirring and adding in three to four tablespoons of lemon juice as the mayo warms. Add a dash or two of unseasoned salt, black pepper and garlic powder, and adjust the amounts to your own increasingly judicious tastes.

COOKED PRAWNS, COOKED SCAMPI OR COOKED SHRIMP IN PASTA: Serves four college graduates who think that prawns, scampi and shrimp are the same thing, but have taken a vow of silence on the subject to keep from embarrassing themselves at $500-a-plate political fundraisers.

Well, guess what? Prawns, scampi and shrimp are the same thing — or, more correctly, different versions of the same thing (which, for your reading pleasure and my profound desire not to have to keep typing all three of those, we'll refer to as shrimp).

Once you've bought shrimp that's already been cooked and is now refrigerated or frozen, your meal is practically prepared. You still have to drive home, of course, and put on some water for pasta, but by and large, the tough part — paying — is over (cooked shrimp is generally more expensive than raw shrimp).

This recipe can accommodate any variation of shrimp, whether it's jumbo, baby or bayou, provided it's already been cooked.

Ingredients

• About 2 lbs of baby shrimp or 20 large guys
• 1/4 cup dry vermouth or dry white wine
• 1/4 cup cold water
• 3 heaping tbs. butter or margarine
• basil flakes
• 1 bay leaf
• dill (dried or fresh)
• parsley flakes
• garlic powder
• chives, minced onions or finely chopped scallions
• 1 chopped celery stalk
• salt, seasoned or regular
• pepper
• chili powder (optional)
• pasta (your choice, but steer clear of any made with tomato)

1. Even if the shrimp is frozen, it will thaw fairly quickly in the broth you're about to make. So go ahead and put up the pasta water first, on medium heat.

2. Remove the shrimp from its packaging and set on a plate.

3. Pour all of the other ingredients, except the pasta, into a skillet, stir and heat.

4. When the skillet liquid begins to bubble a little, put the shrimp in.

5. Keep stirring the shrimp, gently, in the broth. When the pasta water boils, throw in your preferred noodles and cook until they're the texture you like best, whether that's al dente (chewy), Doug dente (a regular guy's pasta) or fender dente (a little too malleable, and worth calling your insurance agent about).
Important timesaving note: I made up those last two names, so please don't start zapping through your Learn Italian Even While Comatose video.

6. Drain the pasta, pour it into a bowl, and then add all of the skillet's contents to it (unless your glasses slipped into the broth at the last moment, as mine frequently have).
Side Dishes: Green salad with vinaigrette steamed fresh green beans with butter, or sautéed zucchini or — yes — Brussels sprouts; hot garlic bread (recipes for all of these are in the chapter, "Soups, Salads, Potatoes, Vegetables and Cool Snacks").

Cool Presentation Award: For some reason, I like to serve this pasta dish in large soup bowls, and make sure that everyone gets enough broth to inspire sopping or slurping (for the latter, provide spoons, not straws; you'll thank me for this).

A Glossary of Useful, Common and Completely Obvious Cooking Terms with which You Can Dazzle Your Enemies and Irritate Your Friends

This Week: Game to Hors d’oeuvres

Game - While this is the word used to describe wild birds or animals, how can they be, with you shooting at them?

Gamy - Used to describe men who have spent an entire weekend together shooting at wild birds and animals while avoiding that most dreaded of urban creatures, The Adjustable-Headed Shower. Also used to describe the taste of game that tastes too much like what it is.

Garlic - The basis of almost every good meal in the universe. Also guaranteed to keep vampires away from nubile young women — particularly if the women drape cloves of the stuff over their doors and around their necks, and begin their sentences with the word, "Like."

Gnocchi - See English.

Goose - See Gnocchi: What must have made Curly Howard of The Three Stooges laugh that way.

Head Cheese - See Aspic.

Herbs - Belonging to any family of seed plants whose stem dies yearly — or, of course, to any guy named Herb.

Hors d'oeuvres - You'll know you're a sophisticate when you stop pronouncing this the way it's spelled. (Really cunning sophisticates will know how to say it but will never let themselves be conned into spelling it. This is one of the many signposts of class distinction in America.)