Crispy Crab Rangoon

Crab rangoon belongs to that peculiar category of American food that pretends to be something else. You'll find it on Chinese takeout menus from coast to coast, yet no grandmother in Guangzhou ever made it. Credit goes to the tiki bars of the 1950s, where Trader Vic and his contemporaries invented a fantasy version of Pacific Rim cuisine. Cream cheese has never touched a wok in Canton. That doesn't make these any less delicious.

The filling takes five minutes to assemble. Sweet crab, tangy cream cheese, a whisper of garlic and green onion. The technique lives in the folding and the frying. Seal your edges properly or the filling leaks into the oil, creating an angry sputtering mess and a hollow shell. Maintain your oil temperature and you'll produce rangoons that shatter when you bite through, the filling stretching in strings between your teeth and the crisp shell.

I've seen home cooks defeat themselves with imitation crab guilt. Use the real thing when you can afford it. Dungeness from the Pacific, blue crab from the Chesapeake, whatever swims in your waters. But quality surimi works respectably here. The cream cheese carries enough richness to blur the distinction. This is party food, not a seafood showcase.