National Crab Meat Day!

I had so much fun celebrating last Wednesday’s national food day, I have decided to make it a Wednesday thing! Today is national Crab Meat day! I LOVE crab. Although you have to get through their rough exterior to get to the meat, once you do and you dip it into some butter…totally worth the work!

In the Fisherman’s Wharf area of  San Francisco, you can walk up to a street vendor pick out the crab you want and they boil and crack it for you right there! I am still so impressed with this! It was some of the most delicious crab I have ever had! So fresh!

Here at home, there is unfortunately no such fresh crab, nor someone to cook it and crack it for me! So, I settled for one of my second favorite crab dishes,  crab cake eggs benedict.  This is one of my top brunch choices when we are on vacation (it is so decadent I try not to have it but every once in a while). How can you go wrong with an egg covered in a sauce that consists mostly of butter!?

Start with the crab cakes. Combine mayonnaise, mustard, Old Bay seasoning, lemon juice, egg and panko breadcrumbs. Then, carefully fold the crab meat into the mayonnaise mixture. Divide the crab mix into four, sprinkle with panko and put in the oven.

After placing the crab cake in the oven, put a large sauce pan filled with water on the stove and while it comes to a simmer, tackle the hollandaise sauce. Whisk the egg yolks and lemon juice together until thick. Then, place the bowl with the lemon juice and egg yolks over simmering water and stir in melted butter, whisk vigorously until thick and doubled in size. Make sure this doesn’t get too hot or the eggs will cook!

I stored the completed hollandaise sauce in the microwave to keep it warm when I moved on to poaching the eggs. No photos were taken at this point due to the first couple botched attempts at poaching an egg and maybe some cursing. I found this video helpful, hopefully you will too

While the eggs are cooking toast two english muffins. Finally, layer an english muffin half, crab cake and poached egg on a plate and cover it with hollandaise sauce.

Enjoy! The full recipe and instructions can be found here!