Friday night, my wife and I joined a cooking webinar with Andrew Rea of
Binging with Babish fame. The plan was to make pan con tomate and Thai crab cakes.
Prior to the event, we received a shopping list, but no recipe or preparation instructions. Yes, this is foreshadowing.
The event was sponsored by Botanist gin, so of course we started off with a classic martini. Mine was done and in the glass well ahead of time - that's one cocktail I am intimately familiar with!
The pan con tomate turned out wonderfully. It's super simple - crusty bread and olive oil, broil, rub with garlic, then top with grated (yes, grated) fresh tomatoes.
By this time, we were more than halfway through the one hour webinar. Andrew kicked it into high gear, and apparently was not aware that we hadn't gotten a detailed recipe yet. So he's done his
mise en place and just starts dumping all the prepped and measured ingredients into his lump crab.
We instantly go into panic mode. We're both chopping vegetables furiously, then I'm beating eggs and eyeballing my ingredients while she's getting the oil hot and figuring out what to do for a sauce. Here's the first sacrificial crab cake - tasted pretty good but didn't have enough egg or breadcrumb so it fell apart.
The next few rounds went better, and the kids - who had already eaten dinner - started drifting into the kitchen. Luckily we'd made a big batch and ended up with about seven small cakes, so there was enough to go around. Mrs. S whipped up a chili-lime "aioli" (yes, we cheated and started with Duke's). It wasn't the Thai vinaigrette that we were supposed to make, but since we didn't get the recipe until after the webinar was over, I'm not complaining at all.
Overall we had a blast - it was a great way to kick off the weekend, and it tasted fantastic. We'll definitely do this again, but next time we'll make sure we get the recipe in hand before we start.
