Dungeness Crab Cakes

The Dungeness crab has sustained the people of this coast for thousands of years. Native tribes harvested them from these cold waters long before European settlers arrived, and the crab remains the centerpiece of Pacific Northwest tables today. When you buy Dungeness, you're participating in one of America's oldest food traditions. Treat it accordingly.

The crime most crab cakes commit is drowning the star ingredient in breadcrumbs, mayonnaise, and filler until you can't taste what you paid good money for. This recipe uses the minimum binding necessary to hold the cakes together. The crab does the talking. You just provide the stage.

I learned proper crab cake technique from fishermen's wives along the Oregon coast who would have laughed at the overstuffed hockey pucks served in lesser restaurants. Their method was simple: pick the crab carefully, bind it lightly, fry it quickly. The cake should barely hold together when raw and firm up only in the pan. If your mixture feels sturdy before cooking, you've added too much filler.

The lemon aioli alongside isn't traditional, but it honors the Asian and Scandinavian influences that shaped Pacific Northwest cooking. Those immigrant communities taught us that good seafood needs acid and richness in equal measure. A squeeze of Meyer lemon if you can find it, or any good Pacific citrus, brightens everything without competing.