>> MING: Hey, welcome to Simply Ming at Home.

This year we're doing crab cakes two ways-- one with delicious real crab, and one using jackfruit, both bounded by a ginger lemon aioli.

Of course, starting off with some cocktails.

We're gonna do a mint pineapple smash with a delicious rum, and then a virgin drink, your favorite, a virgin piña colada.

That's all coming up right here on Simply Ming at Home.

♪ ♪ >> Simply Ming is brought to you by Subaru of New England, proudly celebrating 50 years of love.

Authorized retailers at SubaruOfNewEngland.com Here's to the next 50 years and beyond.

>> MING: Let's get started, shall we?

We're gonna make two delicious cocktails with pineapple, then two crab cakes.

All right... how do you choose a pineapple?

Look, when you push it, see that?

It goes down a little bit, but then comes back.

That's the best way to choose it-- and this way, guys-- (sniffs)-- smell it.

It should smell so sweet, all right?

And this top comes off easily-- that's the third sign.

That's how you choose a great pineapple.

Take both ends off, right-- oh, you can just tell by the smell.

Then, what I like to do, is with a sharp knife, get tight on-- you can't have any of these eyes, see those eyes?

So you have to do about a two-inch... every time, you want to get all the way... because you want no eyes.

Eyes are very chewy, like wood, almost, all right?

And... like that, all right?

And all this, unfortunately... can't eat.

Then, the best way to take the core out is I cut the pineapple in half, all right?

You see the core right there.

So then what I do is I cut it again in quarters.

So now the core is right here, right?

So I take a 45 degrees-- I take the core out.

See that?

45 degrees-- core out.

I only need a little bit, I'll save these cores for later.

We're gonna muddle this, so big ol' pieces of pineapple, like that.

That is all I need.

And we're gonna first muddle, right-- I'm gonna do, like, two or three pieces of pineapple.

Here's some fresh mint.

Take some pieces of fresh mint, give it a spank.

So I'm combining the technique of a mojito, which is using mint and sugar, and I'm not gonna have the abrasion of the sugar, I'm gonna have the sweetness of the pineapple instead.

So then, with a muddler, or a dowel, you really wanna get in there, right.

And see how juicy the pineapple is, see all that juice already coming off?

Get that mint, release the oils.

All right, so then from this, we can then take ice...

Okay, gonna add a little bit of lime juice.

Just take a side of a lime here.

Pineapples are so sweet, I want a little bit of extra acid.

And then, of course, don't forget, your hero, the rum, all right?

Just make sure it's a really good rum.

All the Caribbean countries have some fantastic rum.

Two ounces.

There we go.

Then... shake, shake, shake, guys.

Give this a really good shake.

You really want to get that pineapple, the juice, mixed in with the rum, the lime juice.

This is not a sweet drink at all.

Yes, you could add a little bit of creme de cacao, or you could add simple syrup, but I just love the sweetness of the natural pineapple.

Gives me-- ah, that smells so good.

So you have a glass, just with ice water, right?

Pre-chilled.

'Cause what I want is to then... Oh yeah, baby.

Not a big drink, guys, it's nice and strong.

And I'm just gonna take a nice piece of pineapple and a mint leaf, all right... and garnish it that way.

So we have a mint leaf here.

Just float a mint leaf here, like that.

Voila.

And then a fantastic piece of pineapple, like this.

Okay, there is our pineapple smash.

Let's give this a try.

Oh, my God.

Taste like the islands-- that's really good.

All right, version two.

While we're here, I'm just gonna rinse out this glass, 'cause, again, there was booze in there, right?

So I don't want booze.

So a lot of pineapple.

A little bit... of creme de coco-- this is the luscious coconut cream.

Couple of those, like that.

Don't want it too sweet.

Gonna add a little bit of lime juice, I want a little acid as well.

That's optional, if you want, but what you definitely want to add is some orange.

And you can buy it-- you can buy orange, or you can juice your own orange.

I'm gonna juice my own orange because, you know what, I think the boozy drink and the non-boozy drink are both equally important.

And look how much great juice comes out of this orange.

Look at that-- all right.

So now, here... orange juice.

Fantastic.

Some ice... then, into a blender cup.

We're gonna blend this.

Very infrequently do I do blended drinks.

It's not really my cup of tea, but... why not?

Let's go ahead and get this going.

Everything, and the creme... the pineapple... start it slow, and then go high.

Get it nice and smooth.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, we're doing good.

Oh, yeah, this is nice and smooth.

All right.

Right here.

Look at this.

Oh, yeah, baby.

Oh, yeah, and I got a little... And this is what I like to do, believe it or not-- I like to lighten it up, 'cause we have all that thickness from the pineapple and everything.

Just a little sparkling on top, gives it a little bit of extra fizz.

And watch, it's gonna foam up, because the acid of the pineapple.

It's almost like... not adding egg white.

So now you have this great, fizzy, virgin piña colada.

Cheers.

Oh, wow, that's good.

♪ ♪ What we have is crab cakes.

So, you need flour, egg, and a breadcrumb.

Once you make the cake, you're gonna flour it, you're gonna egg it, then you're gonna breadcrumb it, all right?

Mayonnaise is our binder.

We're gonna cut up some scallions, and a little bit of cucumber, and we're gonna make an awesome aioli using store-bought mayonnaise which, you know what, is fine.

That's not cheating, that's actually just smart.

All right, so, let's get some knifework first.

I'm gonna show you how we're gonna do this.

I'm gonna slice just some scallions, probably about...

I don't know, maybe four or five stalks is plenty.

This is gonna be enough scallions for both of the cakes.

So first I'm gonna just do this... just go ahead and do scallions.

We're gonna have cucumbers-- cucumbers kind of my go-to veg, that is always so refreshing, so light, so easy to prep.

And I like just serving it with crab cakes, 'cause crab cakes are so delicious and rich, right?

We have some beautiful fresh crab that's in the fridge, that's picked-- so, let me talk to you about crab.

When you can, get unpasteurized crab, right.

Picked crab-- we have a lot of it here in New England.

Up in Maine we have some beautiful crab, up in Nova Scotia there's crab.

My point is, you want crab that is not pasteurized.

If it's pasteurized, it's gonna give you... um, gives you a funkier flavor that I just-- I just don't like.

So, here we have all our scallions, we're gonna save-- we're gonna put the green, the white-green's stronger, mix it and here-- look how much we have.

Again, that was five stalks, so I probably, really only needed three stalks.

All right, so here we go, that's all the scallions I need-- okay.

So, let me go grab the crab and show you how you make this mix.

Keep your crab cold, keep it in your fridge.

Normally when you buy crab, guys, that's how crab comes, right.

Fresh crabmeat, always keep it refrigerated.

This is from, uh, Southwest Harbor in Maine.

And when you pick it, it's like this, all right.

And what I doing when I'm picking it is I'm actually taking a piece-- let me just show you, I'll just grab one more here so I can show you.

Now let me just grab one of these great legs, like this, all right, and I just break it up.

And what I'm looking for is-- sometimes there's a little shell and you don't want to have a shell, so I'm flaking it, but I'm actually just going through it to make sure there's not a shell, all right?

To this, I'm gonna add some mayonnaise, which we have here-- and we're gonna add those scallions.

And I already have some minced ginger, all right, so to this bowl-- this is real mayonnaise, store-bought.

All right, good amount, right?

That's really the binder.

I do not put bread crumbs into my crab cakes.

I'm gonna coat it with breadcrumbs.

I think the less expensive crab cakes, people put breading in it to bulk it up.

I don't wanna do that.

So now I take some of the scallions, I have some minced ginger, all right?

You guys have seen me mince ginger before.

And that's it.

And by the way, we have a little shallot here as well that I'm gonna add to the second group.

You can intermix scallions with shallot, it doesn't matter which way you go, both are delicious.

So, since I have both-- so I'm gonna go ahead and just mince a little of this shallot.

So when you're mincing, guys, right, you wanna go straight down, right, take your time, and you wanna come across, like this, right-- this is gonna be country mince, as I say, meaning, pretty, larger pieces.

Now go ahead and do all of this, I'm gonna put half of this in my vegan one, all right.

So here's a little bit of scallion-- uh, shallot, there.

Now, here, when you have the end, guys, right, what do you do?

Well, you can just go ahead and try to keep it together... and then just cut it-- oh, there's a little green part there, so the green part, not bad-- just means sprouted.

Pull it out.

And again, guys, this is country cooking, I'm not going for perfect brunoise.

I do want to make sure the shallots are all the same size.

So that's why you can put it in a pile... and go like that, all right.

So this is going to be for the second crab cake, which is jackfruit, so I'm go ahead and put this in a little bowl.

Guys, this is how we cook in the kitchen, we do the mise, we do all our slicing and dicing first, then we figure out the rest.

All right, in here, I have... shallots, scallions, ginger.

Last thing we need is just a little bit of salt, we're gonna salt it later, too.

A little bit of pepper, and then we're gonna add some acid.

This is a lemon ginger aioli.

So we're gonna add acid two ways.

We're going to add lemon zest-- again, wash your lemon... so the zest is clean, all right?

I'm gonna save the other half-- actually, I'm gonna zest right here.

You might think it's kind of weird, I'm gonna zest on the board-- reason being is this zest is gonna go to the other crab cake, but I want to do this so I can juice half.

It's hard to zest a lemon once it's juiced, right?

All right, so I have this great zest here, see that?

So that's for the next one.

And now, with my lemon here, I can take a nice piece, juice it in.

Okay, perfect, so there's crab cake one.

All right, now the fun part.

We're gonna add a little cucumber, just as some garnish.

To make these crab cakes, you need clean hands.

I have... this is a very dirty process, guys, meaning your hands get really dirty-- that's okay, don't worry about it.

But when you make them, you're gonna put them on top of a plate.

Then I'm gonna go ahead and get my-- it could be a wok or a high pan, it doesn't matter, I'm gonna put it on medium heat and just coat the bottom of the pan with some oil, okay?

Grapeseed oil is my oil of choice.

All right, so as that's heating, let's make some crab cakes.

This is how we do it.

Pretty wet, right guys?

So it's a ball-- I'm gonna do three little crab cakes right here.

I'm gonna do half-- half of my mix.

Okay?

Like this-- so what I'm gonna do now, guys, is this crab cake-- my hands are gonna get a little bit.

All right, I'm gonna try to keep this hand-- so I had the flour, into the egg.

Egg sticks because of the flour, and into my bowl of panko.

All right, so this is my dirty hand.

Flour it well, egg it... all right, then into the panko, okay?

I'm gonna do one more, 'cause I'm doing three.

Flour it... egg it... like this.

Okay, now this I'm gonna put in here, but I'm going to make some more room.

So now, so I have flour, egg, now panko.

So now for the panko... you wanna get panko on top, like this.

See that, and you kind of just move it around, and what you're gonna do is once you have enough panko, you can take it, and you can just put it in your hand, and just flatten it out, see that?

It's gonna be crazy delicate, guys, right, you see that?

Some really delicate crab cake.

You just wanna push the panko in... and this is how you get them really rich and creamy.

I'd rather have the crab cake fall apart when you're cooking it, then having breadcrumbs in it, 'cause when you have breadcrumbs in it, all it does... is be very bready.

Okay.

So, you get the idea... there we are at three crab cakes-- awesome.

All right, let's go back there and cook these up.

And then I'm gonna make you the vegan version.

Exact same technique, using jackfruit instead, okay?

So now, medium heat...

Check this out, guys.

lay them in here, okay?

Nice and soft, these are so delicate, guys.

Okay, like that.

Perfect, all right, so medium heat, those are gonna go-- these are gonna go for about 30 seconds.

Then two minutes-- about two minutes a side.

All right...

They looking all right?

Let's see how they're looking.

That's looking really good.

Okay, I'm gonna get my little spatula here.

And... give this a little flip here, guys, okay?

Look at that.

Oh, yeah, baby-- oh, yeah.

See, I don't mind that they're so delicate like that.

That's a good crab cake.

Cool, so... what we're gonna do-- I'm gonna just make a little plate for you.

Those crab cakes are gonna be done momentarily.

I have my favorite cucumber in the world, English cucumber-- love it, 'cause it's just refreshing and light.

I'm just gonna lay cucumber-- again, this is just how you can plate a dish up, 'cause you have people coming over, it's always nice to have people over.

I have this lemon, remember?

Just a little lemon juice on this, guys.

Just to keep building flavor.

A little bit of salt, and a little bit of pepper.

Oh, yeah-- then...

I have some crab cake here.

With paper towel, I will drain it.

Check these out.

Oh, yeah, look at this.

Look at these crab cakes.

Oh, yeah.

Look at that.

Look how sizzling and luscious these look.

Okay, let's go plate these up.

So, so simple, guys.

Lemon juice and the aioli on top of the cucumbers, like that.

You could serve one crab cake per person, right.

You could put a bed of cucumber, like that.

The other thing I like to do-- if you can get your hand on pink peppercorn, which I love-- not that easy to get, you can use mixed peppercorn.

I like to just crunch it on top, and go like that.

You can just crunch it with your fingers.

There you go, guys.

Crab cake, lemon ginger aioli, and a little bit of cucumber salad.

♪ ♪ All right, we're gonna eat that in just a second.

Let me get the second one done.

Same thing, guys-- we have bread crumb, except this time it's rice flour... And jackfruit, okay?

So, jackfruit... is a fruit that-- this is out of a can, and when they cook it and they put it in a brine, it gets nice and shreddy, and it really looks like crab.

Is it gonna taste like crab?

No, not at all.

But it's gonna have the same mouth feel as crab, so it makes a really pretty good crab cake.

So what I have here is a vegan mayonnaise-- you can buy vegan mayonnaise-- so same ratio, right?

I want to make sure it still binds everything together, okay?

Same flavor, guys, which is what?

We had ginger, right?

A tablespoon of ginger, and we have scallions.

Right?

And we had those minced shallots.

Okay, so all of that... we're gonna add a little salt and pepper, although, I probably won't need to add salt because canned jackfruit is very salty.

They season it really well-- it's not too salty, just very salty.

So I know that, so I'm not gonna add any salt.

It's gonna look just like the other crab cake.

Okay, salt and pepper like always.

Then... you have to take fake egg.

There's these great liquid eggs now.

Just give it a good shake.

You still need the egg-- why?

'Cause that helps bind everything.

So, same technique, guys, here, right?

I can take crab... like that-- or, fake crab, right.

This time, it's rice flour.

So I'm gonna do three again.

Two... and-- actually, you know, I might just do two here.

Keep it easy.

So, rice flour, right, you gotta make sure it gets nice and coated, like that.

Then in the egg... and then in the panko, all right?

So rice flour, gets the egg-- fake egg.

This fake egg is made with mung bean, and it has great protein.

But now here, I have the panko.

And now here I can make-- there we go-- the crab cake.

So this I'll make two kind of... not bigger ones, but just a little bit kind of thicker.

So look at that.

Right, perfect crab cake there.

This crab cake, too, like that, all right?

So let's go to the back here.

I'm gonna go ahead and turn on my fan... my stove, I mean.

Same thing, same amount of oil.

Coat it up.

All right, while we're here, I'll go ahead and slice a little bit of cucumber, same thing, guys.

We'll get the plate all ready to go.

So I just wanna do-- oh, wait, lemon zest!

So this time, okay, I'm gonna save the lemon zest.

I should've added lemon zest into this, to be honest, guys.

But we're gonna add it to top, we're gonna season the crab cake with the lemon zest.

Actually, since I have a cucumber salad, it'll be fine.

So, same idea, guys, just gonna take cucumbers and just... nice thin slices like that.

Put these out on a plate-- (crunching) Mm.

Hmm, that reminds me, how's my smash doing?

Oh, it's good.

Full disclosure, I'm not a huge rum drinker, um, but when it's like that, with fresh pineapple, I'm a pretty good rum drinker.

Same thing, guys.

Lemon... a little bit of salt... little bit of pepper... and then this time, we're gonna actually garnish it with the lemon zest.

All right, let's cook these two up.

So now, grapeseed oil.

These are gluten free breadcrumbs, by the way, guys, right?

Which do really good.

They kind of almost puff up.

Look at those bad boys.

So these-- these actually...

The breadcrumbs itself actually gonfler, meaning the breadcrumbs themself actually expand, which is... really different, but because they're made from rice, they do that.

All right... there we go.

Probably gonna need a little bit longer... okay, yeah, it's gonna need just a touch longer.

It's okay-- it's okay to flip it once, and then flip it back.

And actually I don't mind that technique, because I have so much oil here.

I'd rather the virgin panko-- the gluten-free panko, get some of that-- rest of that oil, so the first side doesn't soak up all the oil, if that makes any sense.

So it's okay to flip it once, but then just make sure-- we're gonna do one more flip and bring it back, all right?

Now this is looking really good, guys.

Oh, yeah, see that?

See how they kind of just puffed up?

I love that.

All right, 30 more seconds and we're good to go.

Okay, here we go.

Coming in, coming in hot.

Oh, yeah, look at those.

Okay, here we go, crab cake one, crab cake two.

Fake crab cakes, all right.

It's time to eat.

Put one here, like that.

Put one here... like that.

Oh, yeah.

Then we have the lemon zest.

Lay that on top.

All right, there we go, guys.

I'm gonna get myself... A fork.

Here we go.

Crab cake one, crab cake two.

With crab, let's give it a try.

Grab yourself-- look how creamy.

See that, guys?

It's so creamy, it's that aioli, love it.

Mm... mm, mm, mm.

Let's try it with this.

It's really good, guys.

Please, I promise you.

All right, let's try the jackfruit.

Equally creamy, right?

With the cucumber... Hmm...

Doesn't have the sweetness of Maine crab, obviously, but... if it was in a crab sandwich, or as an appetizer, and you're not eating seafood, that's a great substitute.

Let's see how we did with our piña colada.

Wow, that's pretty darn good, guys.

There you go, crab cake two ways, using pineapple, two ways.

I hope you cooked along and I hope you learned something.

But most importantly, I hope you're eating it and enjoying it.

Thanks for tuning in to Simply Ming at Home, and, as always, peace and good eating.

For more information on Simply Ming, including upcoming guests and more, visit us online at ming.com/simplyming.

♪ ♪ >> Simply Ming is brought to you by Subaru of New England, proudly celebrating 50 years of love.

Authorized retailers at SubaruOfNewEngland.com Here's to the next 50 years and beyond.

♪ ♪