Suppah

Serious seafood jones going the last couple of days. Last night, I had crab cakes at a place I won't mention. They were complete crap. The crab was barely detectable, the "cake" was grainy and bland. It was just really bad. So tonight, I retailed several items and put them to the test.

First up:



Prep: 5/5 - throw the bag in and nuke it
Taste: 3/5 - mall food court [in my humble opinion]
Texture: 2/5 - no me gusto

I lived on the Gulf Coast for 20 years, years ago, and I have pretty high standards on shrimp. This didn't meet those. I digress. I still ate most of it. Working out drives my appetite.

Next up:



Cioppino:

Prep: 5/5 - easy, just dump into a pan and heat
Taste: 4/5 - needed salt, but good flavor otherwise
Texture: 4/5 - too many mussels that were like tennis shoe soles

Handy cakes:

Prep: 5/5 - easy, dump 'em in the oven [cheat and finish with the broiler]
Taste: 5/5 - good stuff!
Texture: 5/5 - mostly crab and shrimp, but the cake was good too

Both of these were good. The cioppino was typical Whole Foods, in that it needed salt. All their store brand stuff does. But once added, it was quite tasty. Nice aroma, had my cat doing back flips in the kitchen begging for a taste.

The Handy crab / shrimp cakes were quite nice. They were mostly crab and shrimp, and not much cake. What cake there was had a good texture, like stuffing from Thanksgiving. Not like eating raw cornmeal, reference the earlier mentioned bad crab cakes.

Only thing the Handy crab / shrimp cakes needed was some dressing up with lemon juice, followed by chipotle mayo, and they were good to go.