What's for Dinner? How about some local Crab?

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It's been a little while since we checked in with a local recipe. We are not sure if it's the winter doldrums of stew and crock pot meals, but it's been hard to get inspired to tuck into anything besides soup and bowls of chili.  That all changed on Friday when we stopped in to David's Fish Market and found jumbo shrimp on sale and calling us from the fish case were containers of local jonah crab meat.  Yumm... granted, even on sale it was a bit of splurge, but for $48 I fed a family of 5 (with a few leftovers) try taking five people out to dinner stuffed shrimp and crab cakes for $48.  Please let us know if you can!

We took one container and made crab cakes and stuffed the shirmp with the other. It was hard to say which was the bigger hit, because they both got gobbled down pretty quickly.  Also fun was the making!  One of the kids helped to crush the cracker crumbs for the shrimp stuffing, while the other had a ball mixing all the ingredients together and forming the crab cakes.  The nice thing was that it took the same amount of time to cook the tray of shrimp as it did to pan fry the crab cakes.  We steamed up some carrots and viola!  See the recipes below.

Stuffed Shrimp
Ingredients
1 1/2 lbs. of jumbo shrimp
1 sleeve of Ritz crackers (crushed)
1 8 oz. container of Jonah Crab Meat
The juice of one lemon
1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 TBSP of parsley dried parsley
1/4 cup grated Romano cheese
2 TBSP melted butter

Method
Peel the shrimp leaving the top of the tail intact.  Split the back  butterflying completely open and removing the muddy track.  Lightly butter a casserole and line the butterflied shrimp across the bottom.
In a small bowl mix the crushed cracker crumbs, and all other ingrediants except the crab.  When combined, fold in the crab leaving it as lumpy as possible. Fill shrimp with crab stuffing and press the tail end over the top.
Sprinkle with paprika and bake in a preheated 400 degree oven until shrimp is cooked through (about 20 minutes).

Crab Cakes
Ingrediants
1 8 oz. container of Jonah Crab Meat
1 cup of panko bread crumbs
1 egg white
1/2 cup of mayonaise
Juice of 1/2 a lemon and the zest of the whole lemon
2 ribs of celery
1/2 of a red onion
1 tsp. Old Bay seasoning
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. black pepper
1 TBSP parsely
1 clove minced garlic

Method
Cut the celery and the red onion into a fine dice, saute in 2 tbs. and 1 tsp. of olive olive. Cook on medium heat until soft.  Remove from pan to cool to room temperature.  In the mean time, mix the panko with the egg white and mayonaise until smooth.  Add the remaining ingrediants except for the crab.  When combined, fold in the crab meat and the cooled celery and onions.  Form into cakes.
Fry one side at a time in 1 inch of vegetable oil until golden brown. Serve with mustard sauce (2 TBSP dijon mustard mixed with 1 TBSP mayo and 1 tsp lemon juice).