Crab Cakes -- recipe

Birdie DeCoursey’s Killraven Island Crab Cakes

1         lb. Crab meat (more if crabs are plentiful)
2         eggs
2/3     cup corn meal ( or left over mashed potatoes)
1/4     cup milk
1/4     cup grated onion
½         cup grated green pepper
1         tsp. Salt
½        tsp blackPepper
½         tsp curry powder* more if you like it spicy

In a bowl, beat eggs, milk, and seasonings. Add onion, pepper, and corn meal, or mashed potatoes and mix well. Gently add in crab meat and shape into cakes about as big around as a water glass and half an inch or so thick. Drop into hot shortening and fry (turning only once) until golden brown.

Fry with plenty of shortening in a heavy iron skillet. Birdye always used lard, though Crisco is permissible for modern cooks

(*The Curry Powder is Birdey’s secret ingredient. Coursey gets it for her in  Baltimore and only her dearest friends know about this.) Modern Day cooks may use Old Bay Seasoning if they wish. It tastes about the same

Contributed by Arline Chase, author of The Drowned Land, a collection of short stories where Birdy made her first appearance,  and Killraven, a novel where  Hope Voeschell, a gentle young woman, falls in love with DeCoursey Rogers a violent man.... but when their island community encounters rape and murder, Coursey’s “eye-for-an-eye” reaction may cost him everything.