The Whidbey Island Crab Haul Crab Cakes

Over the course of our Whidbey Island stay this past week, we managed to haul in about 24  dungeness crabs.  Pretty fine.  After divi'ing some out, eating a bunch, I was still left with enough to make a good batch of crab cakes.  We discovered chicken bones worked really well as bait.  I had deboned 4 chickens one night and our friend had the great idea of using the bones in the crab pots.  That along with the dog fish Stella pulled out of the water with her bare hand while standing on beach, made for good crabbing.

3 lbs dungeness crab meat

2 Tbsp butter

3 oz pancetta, finely chopped

1 large garlic clove, finely chopped

5 scallions, finely minced

3 ears of corn, cut off the cobb

2 eggs beaten

3 Tbsp heavy cream

1 cup panko

Melt butter in large pan, add garlic and pancetta and fry until pancetta is crispy.  Add in the scallions and corn and saute until the corn is soft.  Let cool.  Mix together with crab, eggs, cream and panko.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Form into cakes.  Refrigerate until ready to cook.  I baked these at 375 for about 15-20 minutes, just until they are heated through and slightly crispy on the outside.  Since there was little to hold the crab together, the cakes fell apart easily, but worth the trade off for the large portion of crab in each cake.  We liked the addition of the corn.  It gave a nice sweetness to the crab cakes.