Monday Night: Crab Cakes and Potato Gratin

Last night I tried the "Crab Cakes with Red Sauce" recipe from JPFF. We ended up eating crab "cakes" that had great flavor, but pretty much no structural integrity. I know that there's always a balance in making crab cakes between lightness and cohesiveness, but these were a bit too far on the "falling completely apart" side.

Some notes:

1. The canned crab we got at Costco tasted ok, but it was in very small pieces. Nothing like proper lump crabmeat.
2. The wasabi in the sauce never really "bloomed". I don't know if that was because I added the powder directly to the sauce instead of making a paste with water first, but that would be an easy question to answer.
3. It probably wouldn't hurt to get the breadcrumbs a bit finer than I did last night; I put too much bread in the food processor at once and it stayed pretty coarse.

Andrea made a gratin to accompany this out of the leftover mashed potatoes from Sunday night, some grated carrot, scallion, and roasted pepper. Seasoned with nutmeg and pimenton, and topped with some grated parmesan, this was delicious.

For dessert we did another quickie thing from JPFF, "Banana coupe" (bananas macerated in honey, lime, and bourbon, served over crushed cookies and topped with toasted almond slices and a bit of sour cream). This was really good, but the bourbon was a bit sharp. I'll try to use less tonight when we make the second half.