Better Crab Cakes

I'm pushing it having crab cakes so often but after last time I wanted to try an improvement to recipe.  This time I planned to use 2 eggs which will make sticky wet cakes that I can coat with panko! First I diced half an onion, half a stick of celery and two cloves of garlic. I caramelized the onions, then sweated the celery and garlic.  I put all that aside to cool.  

I broke up the meat so it was a nice loose pile and added 1/4 cup of flour.  Then I mixed in the sweated veggies and onions and finally added salt, pepper and paprika. I beat two eggs and mixed them then took 1/4 of the batch, formed it into a sticky patty and coated it in panko. That is my innovation, using the bread crumbs as a coating instead of a component. Much better flavor.

I had potatoes on and this time I got nice fresh baby chives from the garden for their sweet flavor.  The carrots and beans were done in the steamer and finished in extra virgin olive oil.  The beans were tough and low on flavor.  I guess spring beans are like spring corn on the cob, disappointing.

I had the crab cakes on medium heat so they don't scorch too much. They don't take too long to cook. While they were sizzling I mixed up 1 tablespoon of mayonnaise and 1-2 teaspoon of sweet relish into a simple tartar sauce. 

The potatoes with the sweet chives were terrific. Object lesson: given the choice, harvest the sweet fresh chive shoots. The beans weren't great but that isn't  my fault, they weren't great beans and I don't know how to fix a quality issue like that. The carrots were good as always but the crab cakes were the star.  Coating the cakes in bread crumbs gave them that wonderful crunch I was looking for. I could have used more garlic but at least I got the salt right.