Crab Crazy

Crab Crazy

Hot Stove Instructor Herschell Taghap taught a high-octane sold-out crab cake class last night. The class was based on 3 recipes from our Tom Douglas book, I Love Crab Cakes—Wild Thing (called Avocado Crab Salad Cakes in the book), Steven’s Perfect Crab Cakes (nowadays this is the recipe most similar to the crab cakes you’ll find in the Tom Douglas restaurants) and Crab Foo Yung (sometimes on the TanakaSan menu.)

The class started off with a festive party atmosphere: a crowd of cheery class members (a few wearing their own crab cake t-shirts!) with a glass of wine or beer in hand, entered the classroom to find their mise en place (measured ingredients) neatly laid out on sheet pans on the work tables.

Herschell flipping crab foo yung
Herschell flipping crab foo yung

First Herschell showed us how to boil live crabs and how to clean them (which looks like a snap when Herschell does it), while regaling the class with priceless tips like saving the juices from breaking down a cooked crab to infuse your next bowl of steamed rice. Herschell also explained how to find any bits of shell in the picked crabmeat by shining a black light over it. The shell bits will glow and you can pick them out and discard!

Next Herschell demonstrated how to make a wild thing- carefully stacking avocado slices with a creamy, seasoned crab mixture in a ring mold, then unmolding and topping with spicy sriracha mayo and bright red tobiko. (Here’s a tip: if you don’t have ring molds, save up 8-ounce tomato sauce cans, tops and bottoms removed, sterilized in the dishwasher.) The Wild Thing will astonish your guests with its elegance, but due to the magical symmetry of the ring mold, it’s not as difficult as it looks.

Class members got to make their very own wild things and fry up their very own perfectly golden brown crab cakes.

Lastly, there was a demo of the Crab Foo Yung, with some heroic flipping skills on display. (photo credit for photo above to Emily Yan)