Christmas 2014

Our Christmas seafood dinner and not one decent photo to show. I had no real plan heading into dinner and so I ended up with a strange combinations of things we like. I felt a little uneasy about the pairing until it hit me. Our dinner of stuffed clams topped with thick slices of bacon and crab cakes made from my favorite childhood recipe came straight from the menu of any Italian inspired East coast seafood house found up and down the right side of the country. Back East the crab is blue but now that I am a Westerner we are Dungeness all the way. The delicious winter crab.
I grew up in Maryland where crab is a summer treat and the best steamed crabs, crab soup and crab cakes are hotly debated topics. Certainly one of my favorites is Faidley's in Lexington Market and I've been using their crab cake recipe flavored with mustard and worcestershire sauce (and my own splash of old bay seasoning and a dash of hot sauce)  for years. Tonight I offered this to James along with a quirky cranberry cocktail sauce I first whipped up one evening when the cupboard was bare.
"Kings don't eat like this," James said.
They do at our house.
Merry Christmas Honey!