Seafood Cakes with Herb Sauce -- When the First Morel Tells You Something About the Year Ahead

March 2037. The eighth cohort included two high school teachers who had come because of Madison's Oklahoma State curriculum work and wanted to understand the source material they'd be teaching. Having teachers in a cohort of practitioners created a useful dynamic: they asked questions that forced me to articulate things I'd been doing intuitively.

One teacher, Ann from Muskogee, asked: when you teach this, what's the thing you're most afraid of losing in the transmission? I said: the reason. I said: the technique can be written down and demonstrated. What's hard to transmit is the understanding of why these specific plants and preparations belong to specific people and places—why they're not interchangeable with someone else's food. If people learn the how without the why, they have a recipe. If they learn the why, they have a practice. Ann said: that's the difference between content and culture. I said: exactly that.

The morel first-find came March 19, early for the season. Went alone, found nine, ate the first one standing in the woods in cold light, wrote down the date. Every year the date varies by a few weeks and the variation tells you something about the year ahead. March 19 says the winter broke early and the spring will run long. I'll take it.

Standing in the cold March light with a single morel in hand, before I’d carried the other eight back to the truck, I already knew what I wanted to cook that evening—something that asked the same thing of me the woods had: careful attention to texture, to freshness, to not overwhelming what was already right there. These seafood cakes with herb sauce are that kind of cooking. The herb sauce is the why; the cakes are the how. Ann would understand.

Seafood Cakes with Herb Sauce

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 15 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1 lb mixed seafood (crab, shrimp, or white fish), cooked and roughly chopped
• 1/2 cup plain breadcrumbs
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 2 green onions, finely sliced
• 1/4 cup celery, finely diced
• 1/2 teaspoon Old Bay seasoning
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons neutral oil (canola or avocado), for pan-frying
• Herb Sauce:
• 1/2 cup sour cream or plain Greek yogurt
• 2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon fresh chives, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon fresh dill, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• Salt to taste

Instructions

1. Make the herb sauce. Combine sour cream, parsley, chives, dill, garlic, and lemon juice in a small bowl. Season with salt, stir well, and refrigerate until ready to serve.
2. Mix the seafood cakes. In a large bowl, combine seafood, breadcrumbs, mayonnaise, egg, Dijon, Worcestershire, green onions, celery, and Old Bay. Season with salt and pepper. Mix gently until just combined—do not overwork.
3. Form the cakes. Divide the mixture into 8 equal portions and press each gently into a patty about 3/4 inch thick. Place on a lined plate and refrigerate for 10 minutes to firm up.
4. Pan-fry. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook cakes in batches, 3—4 minutes per side, until golden brown and heated through. Do not crowd the pan.
5. Rest and serve. Transfer cakes to a paper-towel-lined plate to rest for 2 minutes. Serve with herb sauce spooned alongside or on top.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 310 | Protein: 24g | Fat: 17g | Carbs: 14g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 580mg