I love crab cakes. There’s a good reason you find them on so many restaurant menus. They can be a bite-size appetizer (the Hub used to make them for parties, back when we used to have parties), or you can make larger patties to serve as a main course (alongside a big salad and some crusty bread, so you don’t make a glutton out of yourself over the crab cakes alone).

I have followed this recipe to the letter, with good quality crab meat and beautiful shrimp that required peeling and deveining. They were so good I wanted to hide them from the guests and huddle in a corner with my bowl of remoulade. But for a weeknight, when you’re trying not to blow the grocery budget on a single meal, you can absolutely make these with whatever proportion of canned crab and frozen shrimp you have. It’s a reassuringly flexible recipe, and last week I used one little can of crab and about a pound of cooked frozen shrimp, scaling down the other ingredients slightly (I also halved the remoulade). The entire platter was devoured, and Miss Seven asked me the next day if there were any crab cakes left for lunch. Now that’s high praise.

Crab Cakes

1 lb. crab meat

1 lb. shrimp, chopped

1/2 cup fine bread crumbs

1 tsp. cayenne

1/2 tsp. hot sauce (like Tabasco)

1/4 cup scallions, chopped

1 tsp. Worcestershire (or soy sauce)

5 eggs

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup water

2 cups flour

2 cups bread crumbs

Oil for frying

Combine the seafood, bread crumbs, cayenne, hot sauce, scallions and Worcestershire. Add one egg and the mayonnaise. Mix thoroughly and shape into patties (I used an ice cream scoop). Whisk the remaining 4 eggs with the water in a shallow dish. Lightly dredge the patties in flour (they’ll want to fall apart, so be patient and just keep sticking them back together), dip them into the egg mixture, and then the bread crumbs.

Heat 2-3 Tbsp. of oil over medium-high heat in a large sauté pan (I use my nonstick pan). Fry 4-6 crab cakes at a time–don’t crowd them)–until lightly brown on both sides. Add oil between batches if necessary. Keep them warm on a paper towel-lined platter in a 200-degree oven.

Serve with Remoulade Sauce:

2 cups mayonnaise

1/4 cup cornichons, chopped

1/4 cup capers, chopped

1 oz. chives, chopped

1 tsp. paprika

1/2 tsp. cayenne

1 oz. anchovies, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients together and chill. (Leftover remoulade + can of tuna = fabulous lunch.)