By Perry Mascitti / Special to The Herald
Fat Tuesday is here, so let’s celebrate with a delectable dish straight out of New Orleans.
These cork-shaped crawfish cakes with a garlic-caper remoulade for dipping are super easy to make ahead of time. Put them in the oven for a quick warm-up when you’re ready to party.
For this appetizer, I decided to use a file powder, also known as gumbo file, derived from the small green leaves of the sassafras tree. I love combining succulent crawfish with the gumbo file spice — it just screams Mardi Gras.
The last-minute cooking leaves time for another Mardi Gras tradition: finding the baby in the king cake. Whoever finds the trinket in their slice of the crown-shaped cake gets to be “king” for a day.
Now throw me some beads!
Mardi Gras crawfish cakes with garlic-caper remoulade
For the garlic-caper remoulade:
2 cups mayonnaise
1 cup sour cream
½ cup capers, rinsed and chopped fine
½ cup chopped roasted garlic
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 chicken bouillon cube, crushed fine
For the crawfish cakes:
7 egg yolks
1½ cups chives OR green onion, chopped fine
⅛ cup file spice powder
2 tablespoons black pepper, course ground
1 tablespoon chile flakes (optional)
1½ tablespoons clam base paste OR 1 tablespoon salt
2½ pounds crawfish meat, fresh or frozen, chopped medium fine, smaller than pea size
6 cups panko breadcrumbs, divided
½ cup olive oil
Lemon wedges, for serving
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Make the garlic-caper remoulade: In a medium bowl, mix mayonnaise, sour cream, capers, garlic, black pepper and chicken bouillon. Set aside.
Make the crawfish cakes: In a medium bowl, mix egg yokes, chives, file powder, chile flakes and clam base. Then gently add in and toss the crawfish and 3 cups panko breadcrumbs.
Make 2-ounce balls out of the crawfish mixture and flatten each side to make a large cork shape. Roll each side in the remaining panko breadcrumbs.
In a ½ cup of olive oil on medium heat, saute each cake end until brown, and crisp each flat side, about 1 minute on each side. You can brown these up to a day ahead of time and place them on a cookie sheet in the refrigerator.
When ready to serve, place them in the preheated oven for 8 minutes until warmed through and crispy brown on all sides.
Serve with lemon wedges and the garlic-caper remoulade.
Makes 8 servings (or about 30 crawfish cakes).
Perry Mascitti is the executive chef at Tulalip Resort Casino. Mascitti manages nearly 260 kitchen staff, including chefs, sous chefs and cooks. He’s been at Tulalip since 2007 and has more than 30 years of culinary experience.
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