Today's experiment in cooking
Dungeness Crabcakes, recipe adapted from "America's Test Kitchen."
The original recipe used a shrimp mousseline, made in a food processor, but as I lack a food processor and fresh fish paste is quite easy to find in the local Asian markets, I substituted for it and tweaked a few other flavorings.
The crab meat came from fresh Dungeness crabs I bought yesterday in Chinatown. Two 2-lb live crabs yielded 1-lb of picked crab meat, which is the typical 25% proportion you can expect with Dungeness crabs. This recipe made a total of 8 crabcakes and I can completely understand why restaurants charge so much for the good stuff; the ingredients alone cost a pretty penny and I'm throwing in my labor for free.
I've made a note to increase the fish paste amount to compensate for the tapioca starch used in it, to better bind the crab meat together. Probably can also cut back a bit of salt since the paste has a sizable amount.
But overall? I consider the experiment a success. Yum.