Crab, crab, and more crab.

My dinner plate, you can see crab cakes in the background

We had a strange but very tasty dinner tonight.  I bought a can of crab meat this week.  Other than in California rolls at Sushi restaurants I have never really eaten crab, which isn't exactly common here in Minnesota.  Neither of my parents grew up eating it, so it's just never been a part of my reality.

My son's veggie sushi on a piece of tamago

But NomNomPaleo keeps posting these tasty looking crab recipes so I decided to give it a try.  I made her Krabby Patties and her crab hand rolls (scroll down to see a great photo of her crab hand rolls,) which don't really go together, but since they both involve crab and mayonnaise why not?  We had artichokes and I set out a variety of sushi fillings for the kids to make their own sushi.  I will never be a sushi chef, but Rowan has promise!

I have been searching for ages for the right combination of healthy oils for homemade mayonnaise.  100% olive oil gets a strange bitterness, walnut oil mixed with olive has the same problem.  I have read recipes for coconut oil mayo, but somehow that doesn't appeal to me.  I categorically don't use any oil that has to be steamed, bleached, or involves strange solvents, so most of the bland vegetable oils are out.  So far my favorite has been "virgin" cold pressed, local, high oleic sunflower oil, but it's way more expensive than olive oil, so it's a rare treat.  I can say that unfiltered raw sesame oil is okay, but has a tahini taste that doesn't belong in mayonnaise.  Next time I buy oil I think I will try hazelnut if I can find some.

Here are the vegetable fillings for our sushi, those are sorrel leaves and chives from our garden, plus sushi ginger, carrots, and cucumbers.  There were also a few avocados lurking around the table.

I have never used coconut flour before.  I like that it's lower in carbohydrates, and it worked great for dusting the crab cakes.  The crab cakes were sweet, with a moist interior and a crispy fried outside, which I assume is how they should taste, though I have never had one before so I can't compare to traditional crab cakes.  I mixed a bit of wasabi in with some of the mayo which made a great sauce for the crab cakes.  Here they are frying.  I used coconut oil to fry them, which worked great and tasted great.

One of my favorite things about my kids is their relative flexibility with food.  Sure, none of them will eat peas or bell peppers, but my older son had three crab cakes, and my younger son was a sushi making machine, making up creative new vegetarian rolls, and he tried the crab cakes.  I credit their love of Japanese food mostly to our family tradition of eating at Midori's Floating World for special occasions.  And Midori's habit of giving my kids special treats at the end of every meal, pretty Japanese suckers or hard candies.  She doesn't do it any more, but when they were little and impressionable she wooed them, and they are devoted to her now.  One of the very best things about Midori's is that they have a gluten free menu with a great selection.  Back when I could eat gluten I thought they had the best tempura in town.

Tomorrow I'll post pictures of the S'more pie my younger son made up today.  We would have finished it tonight but we are all too full to contemplate making the filling for the crust we made earlier, so the pie will have to wait.

Tamago and kim chi for homemade sushi