Crazy for crab cakes

Oakland Tribune, Feb 16, 2005 by Jolene Thym - STAFF WRITER

ON TODAY'S MENU: Crab cakes. No soup, no salad, no sides, no dessert. Just crab cakes, those deliciously comforting rounds that take all of the work out of eating crab.

Much of the year, such treats are occasional menu visitors, expensive and often made with canned crab. But this month, at the height of Dungeness crab season in San Francisco, the crab cakes are fresh, sweet and irresistible.

Painfully aware that not all crab cakes are good, co-food editor Jodie Chase and I decided to scour Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco in search of the quintessential crab cake -- a cake so perfect in every way that it would be the last recipe for crab cakes we would ever need.

A great idea, but as we made the tasty trek from one end of the Wharf to the other, downing way more than our legal limit of crab, I realized there was a problem.

We tasted crab cakes spiked with curry, dusted with sesame seeds and paired with onion remoulade. We nibbled crusty cakes, crispy cakes and cakes fresh off the grill.

The result: There really is no such thing as a perfect crab cake. Every crab cake has a personality all its own. Whether it is deep- fried, flash-fried, broiled or grilled; triple-herbed, barely- spiced or super-sauced, it is, in the end, its own delicious little self.

The reason we found such delicious variations, we learned, is that most chefs consider the crab cake an invitation to experiment.

"Other dishes we make are expected to taste a certain way. But you can do just about anything with a crab cake," says Al Payton, chef at Neptune's Palace, a venerable waterfront restaurant at the end of Pier 39.

"I like to do something a little different, and I like to change it up. I have several different sauces. I do a remoulade, a red pepper aioli, a lemon citrus beurre blanc. It depends on my mood. I'm always looking for a new idea."

Not that every crab cake experiment succeeds, he says. "Once I tried a cake with red, yellow and green peppers in it. It just didn't work because it was too much pepper. The flavor of crab is pretty delicate."

This month, Payton's crab cakes come two on a plate with greens, thinly sliced red peppers and a few delicate string fries on top. The spicy, sweet remoulade topped with black sesame seeds complements the sweetness of the crab, tucked in a tender-crisp crust.

Pushing the crab cake into even more adventurous territory is chef Chandon Clenard at Blue Mermaid, a chowder house near the Maritime Museum. His cake is topped with an Indian-inspired tomato- prune chutney.

"I like to do lots of different flavors with a crab cake, but I don't overdo it. You have to go easy when you are working with crab," Clenard says, explaining that the choice of spice is much less critical than the amount used.

"The reality is that a lot of people inadvertently mask the flavor of their crab by adding too much filler. You can do that with something as simple as mayonnaise," he says.

Too much mayonnaise or too many eggs require too many bread crumbs to hold the cake together, he says. The result is a tasteless cake and a sad waste of crab.

The concept of allowing the flavor of the crab to shine is the overriding consideration of many San Francisco chefs, including Steve Scarabosio at Scoma's, a classic seafood restaurant at Pier 47.

At Scoma's, crab cakes have been made and served pretty much the same way for decades. Like most restaurants on the wharf, Scoma's buys its crab from a local supplier who not only catches, but also cracks and picks the crab, delivering it to the restaurant in sealed, vacuum-packed cans that keep the crab fresh for about a week.

"People come here from all over the country just to order our crab cakes. We wouldn't dare change our recipe," Scarabosio says.

"What we do is get the freshest possible crab. Then we add just a little bread crumbs and seasoning to hold it all together. The only thing we want people to taste is the crab. I once heard someone say that a great crab cake is held together by sheer will power."

Chef Mark Dommen at One Market agrees. In fact, Dommen is so passionate about preserving the flavor of fresh crab that he refuses to put any form of filler in his crab cakes.

"I don't like to mess with the crab flavor. I think it's nice to have a lively sauce, but you want to work with the flavors and keep it really simple." He even avoids using onions, because their sharp flavor can dominate the crab, he says.

His cakes are essentially fresh hunks of crab held together with scallop mousse, which underscores the sweetness of the crab.

Dommen is also very particular about his crab. He selects, cooks and picks his own crab so that he has control over the salt, the brine flavors and also the freshness factor.

"When crab is too old, it gets kind of mushy and loses its sweetness," he says. Another key to a great cake, he adds, is to be sure to include not just the super-white crab meat from the body, but also the large, sweeter hunks from the claws.

"The meat from the claw is essentially like a steak. It's what gives the texture, the bite."