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Wow, it’s been an amazing month! As many regular SPLURGE! readers know, I proposed to a beautiful lady in April’s issue last year. The last weekend in February, I married that beautiful lady, and we’re preparing to start our life together. 

In addition to getting ready for our wedding, I’ve also been planning an expansion of “Friend that Cooks Home Chef Service” into the Kansas City market. Some of you may have seen us preparing omelets this past month at Scholfield Auto Plaza too. With all this and a honeymoon happening this coming month, I’m going to be just as busy again.

With all this hoopla going on, I’ve found time to create a brand-new recipe to share with all of you. I like this recipe a lot. It’s one of my new favorites, and it was created by chance. While writing out a menu to prepare for the week, I decided to make one of my favorite dishes, crab cakes. Unfortunately, crab isn’t as easy to get a hold of in some grocery stores as others. As luck would have it, the particular store I shopped in that day had no crab meat. Being the crafty cook that I am, I decided to try out shrimp in my crab cake recipe. Now, I know I’m not the first person to make shrimp cakes, but I think that you’ll find that my new shrimp cake recipe is not only easy to make, but very, very delicious!

Step 1

1 stalk celery, finely chopped

1 stalk green onion, finely chopped

¼ red bell pepper, finely chopped

2 clove garlic, finely chopped

1 lb shrimp, deveined and shelled but not cooked

2 tsp Old Bay seasoning

1 tsp paprika

½ tsp onion powder (not onion salt)

½ tsp ground thyme

¼ tsp cayenne pepper

½ cup unseasoned bread crumbs

2 eggs

Combine all the ingredients in a mixing bowl. Mix them together by hand until the egg is distributed evenly throughout the entire mixture. The resulting mixture will be very sticky and slightly wet. If it isn’t wet enough, you can add another egg.

Step 2

2 tbsp olive oil

Preheat a sauté pan on the stove over medium heat. Stove temperatures vary, so turn the stove down if the pan burns the oil quickly when you add oil to the pan.

Separate the shrimp mixture into 4 even sections. Take half of each section, roll into a ball, then flatten into a patty. As you finish each patty, place them into the sauté pan with ½ tablespoon of the oil per 2 patties cooked. Cook each patty for 3 minutes per side or until a side is golden brown. Flip with a spatula and wash your hands before touching any cooking or serving equipment after making patties. Raw shrimp isn’t something you want to spread all over your kitchen.

The patties can be made smaller to serve as appetizers, or prepared with a sauce to add some zing. Try some mustard and mayo mixed together with fresh dill and capers for a quick and easy sauce.

Brandon O’Dell owns Friend that Cooks Home Chef Service and offers meal prep, cooking lessons, personal shopping and private dinners or parties, all in your home, with your food, at a flat hourly rate of $31/hr. You can contact Brandon O’Dell at: 316.361.0675.