Why hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophes, where once again we’re pushing culinary boundaries, and annexing Asian cuisine under American imperialism. I’m your…Fuck, what was Petty’s first name? Petty? Perry?  Commodore...Mmmmaaatthew(?) Perry. Yeah, that’s right. I’m your Commodore Matthew Perry, and that joke I took way too long to remember doesn’t even work because this is a THAI dish, not Japanese, and this whole intro’s gone to shit. We’re making Crab Curry Burgers, here’s a link to skip the stink, everyone else, let’s dig in.

Necessity is the Mother of invention. Laziness is its Aunt.

So, today’s topic doesn’t have a TON of historical or etymological details to unpack, because it was intended to be more of an exploration of process: Given last week’s post about how burgers make a fun food choice for first fusion…f-attempts, I thought it might be fun to have a post exploring that process in more thorough detail, by, for the first time in a while on the site, really making my own recipe, rather than just taking someone else’s and tweaking it to avoid being sued.

Because I CANNOT afford a lawyer. I can’t even afford PICTURES of lawyers.

I then proceeded to get a migraine Monday, spend over 9 hours “on the phone” over the course of the week (Most of it for good/ enjoyable reasons (ie, talks with friends, tele-therapy, Zoom book-club, etc), but it was still an insane amount of time for me), and spend most of the week trying to “catch up” on YouTube shows I didn’t have time to watch in Leavenworth, a process complicated by binging an entire Netflix show during the week as well. In short, it was a little hard to get any ideas OUT with all I was putting IN.  But, hey, let’s talk about the process, even somewhat abbreviated as it was!

So step one is to get a specific goal: My plan was to make “an Asian burger”, but Asia is a BIG continent. More people live IN Asia than don’t. So I had to narrow that down. My first instinct was some kind of riff on Pho: maybe a French dip/burger-dip esque sandwich, get some herbs and bean sprouts on it. Not a bad idea, though I felt that I’d have to do something with the burger itself, otherwise I’m just making a normal burger and dipping it in pho broth. And, as much as I love Pho, we HAVE done 2 of the 4 burgers for the month as Beef burgers. And sure: as an American, “beef” is the first meat that comes to mind with burgers, but it’s not the ONLY option.

Like whatever’s going on here!
(Lentils. This is a Lentil burger")

Luckily, another burger I’m making uses Lamb, so I was debating with myself whether ONE non-beef burger in four posts was a good enough ratio, when, during a call where I was discussing it, it was pointed out to me that there are FIVE Mondays this month. So even IF I went with the Pho idea, I also need another one.

I then also remembered that I had intended, in part, to do Asian burger month to “cheat”: as I mentioned last month, the part I dislike most of writing our posts is asking people to support our Patreon/Facebook/all of that at the end of posts, and I was actually happy to have a moral argument AGAINST making those requests during all this, since obviously there are more important things going on that you should be giving money to than “that guy who does the kinda funny, kinda informative food posts”. You know, ‘actually feeding my family now that I’m unemployed’, ‘financially assisting friends or family caught up in protests’, ‘oh god, what the fuck are they doing to the Post office’, etc etc.

REVEAL YOUR SECRETS, BOX!

I’m trying to broaden my comfort zone for it, and actually picked up some books to help me with that. But until I get there, I figured “one tie-in post a month gives me a natural way to connect the site with the Patreon, AND it gives me some structure in that I will know ahead of time what one dish for a month HAS to be connected to, and it’s not a huge imposition on the readers…once I get past explaining it every time” And since this month’s review is of the Thailand box, I decided to research Thai options.

Of course, the first things that sprang into my head were my ‘iconic’ Thai foods: Pad Thai and the other noodle dishes like Pad See Ew, Khao Soi and the other curries, etc. Pad Thai/See Ew felt a little wobbly: noodle dishes are one of the harder options to convert to a burger, because the structure of the starch components is so different, and also Pad Thai sauces are notorious for using some ingredients that might be hard to locate. Khao Soi, my personal favorite Thai curry, felt workable, but I almost always eat it with Chicken. (That may not sound like a problem, but my brain had naturally realigned to the “assume this will be a beef burger” setting for the first couple minutes of thinking about Thai options without me noticing.) Then came the second tier of ideas: Thais eat Larb pretty frequently, and I already made that with beef once. That one felt like it wouldn’t be hard to bring to a burger. There’s the Fish Sauce wings recipe, which could become a “Fish-Sauce Fried-Chicken…Sandwich”. I’ve been considering doing Pad Krapao/krapow, a mixture of ground meat, garlic, chiles, lime juice, and basil, so that could work…

Nothing in particular jumped out at me, so I decided to do a bit of research: what are some more popular Thai beef dishes? I know you CAN get beef as a protein for noodles, or curries, but are there any specific recipes that are more typically beef? 15 minutes or so of research found (and laid out recipes for) Waterfall Beef and Crying Tiger beef. Both valid options, and they’re pretty close to the Shaking beef we did earlier this year. (edit: apparently that was last November. 2020 has really fucked up my perception of time) I  didn’t hate them, but I didn’t love them. Which is when my brain returned to the “what if don’t do beef” question. I was just kind of starting to get into that idea, when I happened across a Facebook post that interested me: According to other Universal Yums people, the Crab Curry chips that came with the box were the least popular snack.

Seen here, with cat in background.

Which my family found weird: the Crab curry chips weren’t terrible to us. They didn’t taste much like Crab OR curry, instead tasting like a toned down version of Oriental Top Ramen seasoning, but they weren’t as off-putting as other options.

Pity I couldn’t’ do a Crab Curry burger, eh?

…wait. Why couldn’t I?

I know how to make crab cakes. And crab cakes are basically just patties of crab meat and breading. That could EASILY be the heart of a burger. Some veggies and sauce, and that’s a solid burger foundation. It solves the ‘too much beef’ problem, it ties DIRECTLY to the Patreon stuff, and Crab Cakes aren’t all that hard to make, so depending on how I did it, the dish probably wouldn’t be all that difficult.

I mulled it over, and decided to do it. Which brings us to Phase 2 of the process.

Form, Function, Funyuns.

Phase 2 is of course: figuring out what, exactly, you’re doing: sure, you have the idea of “crab Curry burger”, but what exactly does that mean?

Obvious first step is “crab-cake patty”, since, duh. And…what else? You COULD just do like, a curry mayo, or a smear of curry sauce between the patty and the bottom bun…but this Is where the ‘grammar’ of burgers comes back into play: while there are plenty of great burgers with very little in the way of toppings, they are the exception. I’ll suck down Dick’s all day, but I don’t trust just any meat market for that. (Dick’s, for those unaware, is a local old-school hamburger joint in Seattle that inspires an insane amount of loyalty from many Seattleites. I didn’t just make a typo during an unexpected announcement of enjoyment of blow-bangs) MOST burgers need at least some kind of vegetable: even McDonald’s knows to toss some pickles and diced onion on their cheapest burgers. So we need vegetables. And if we’re making a curry burger, we need the kind of veggies you get IN a curry.

Seen here, before explaining what they are.

A quick glance at various Thai curry recipes told me that Bell Pepper, Eggplant, and Bamboo shoots were popular in various curries, so I immediately envisioned a sort of pseudo-slaw/almost grilled-onion-like topping: a scoop of curry sauce studded with softened vegetables, spooned over the top of the crab-cake.

With that idea in the bag, I felt like I needed 1-2 more little steps: firstly, for reasons I can’t fully explain, I felt that a SLICE of eggplant under the patty would be good. I guess my instinct was that the bitterness of the eggplant would hopefully balance what was looking to be a fairly rich burger, but I don’t know that my brain ever really HAD an explicit, logical reason, other than maybe “if we’re slicing egg plant for the top, let’s also put it on the bottom!” I also considered that, between the softness of the vegetables, crab-cake, and raw egg-plant, the burger might need some texture, so I grabbed a bag of crunchy chow mein noodles.

The idea assembled, it was time to hammer the dish itself out, after a quick late-night trip to the grocery store, in order to minimize contact with other people.

An extensive list of ingredients, followed by “Breakfast Stuff” is very on-brand for me.

Crabby-Cake, Crabby Cake, Burger Man

I hope that pun works for you guys, because the first pass at it was so uninspired, it drove last night Jon to give up on finishing the post and pass it off to Monday morning Jon.  

SO how did we make the burger? Well, first, we made the patties: I used a modified version of my recipe from our Crab-Cake post, where I replaced the teaspoon of seasoning with 3 tsps of red curry paste, in order to build the curry flavor straight into the cake. I also added 1.5 tsp of Lemongrass paste, replaced half the mayonnaise with coconut milk, and added the zest of one lime (don’t worry, the full new recipe will be at the bottom)

I definitely thought “This looks way too green”, before I dropped a pound of crab meat on it, and went “oh, no, that looks fine now.”

I also ended up using crab claw meat instead of lump meat, and realized seconds into checking the meat for shell fragments that I had no idea how to do that, but hands were now covered with crab, so I couldn’t look it up, so I just kind of felt through the bundles of crab meat for hard bits, didn’t find any, and hoped for the best. (Of the 3 cakes eaten so far, only one bite of one had a tiny hard shell fragment, so SO FAR the process did an okay job) Once everything is mixed together, pop it into the fridge for 30 minutes.

While the cake-mix is chilling, get started on the curry sauce. (That’s a weird sentence out of context.) I just used a recommended curry recipe on the curry paste container, which was just “curry paste, coconut milk, water, and vegetables”. You bloom the paste in oil for a minute or two, then add coconut milk, heat and mix until the paste is fully dissolved in the milk, let it reduce a little, then add the pre-chopped strips of eggplant, bell pepper, and bamboo shoots.

This definitely looks like curry made by a white dude.

You could also do what I really did, and forget to add the bamboo shoots for like, 10 minutes. Add a little more coconut milk, and some water, and just cook that until the veggies are soft and the curry is reduced to a thick mixture, tasting and adjusting for seasoning. I ended up adding more coconut milk as well as a little extra salt, and some lime juice, because the flavors were just a little weak to me. In retrospect, normally the curry would ALSO be flavored by the meat cooked in it, so I should have added a little bit of bouillon or something instead of the salt.

Anyway, while that’s bubbling away, form the crab cake mixture into patties, dust with flour, and fry for 3-5 minutes a side. Be careful when putting the cakes in the pan: I had hot oil splash across three of my knuckles, and spent the next 2 hours pissed off with a hurting hand.

Did I cook the later patties a little more fiercely in ‘revenge’? Who’s to say.

Oh, shit, I forgot to tell you to slice some nice rounds of eggplant, and salt them for like, 15 minutes. Just cut like, somewhere between 1/8 and ¼ of an inch thick slices, sprinkle some salt on both sides, and let sit. This draws out some of the excess water, and makes the slices less bitter.

Curry thickened, cakes fried, and slices salted, it’s time to assemble: bun, eggplant, Crab cake, curry, bun. Definitely take a moment here to forget about the Chow mein noodles you bought specifically for this, meaning you now have an entire bag of noodles with no purpose. Look, it was a confusing time. (I ended up JUST wrapping this up as our actual dinner plans were being put into action, since I had small buns, and intended these to be sort of appetizers. That plan didn’t fully work out, since I went with 4 patties instead of 5 or 6, but it wasn’t TOO far off.

Lighting’s too dark to see the eggplant, but overall, looking pretty good.

Flavorwise: the crab cakes themselves turned out pretty solid: We had the extra one beforehand, and it was rather subtle, with a LITTLE heat from the curry paste, and a little lemon-flavor from the lemongrass, but overall it tasted like a pretty good normal crab-cake. The burger itself was similarly fine. It wasn’t amazing, but there was nothing really wrong with it, either, other than it did end up pretty same-y in texture, which wasn’t ENTIRELY a bad thing.

I think what it really needed was a bit more acid, and freshness, and some more complicated/punchy flavors in either the sauce or cake. I think the eggplant, while not bad, wasn’t really adding much. So maybe in a second pass, I’d replace it with a small bit of parsley or cilantro. Maybe whip up a lime-sauce for the bottom. Maybe use coconut cream instead of coconut milk in the crab cake, and maybe season the coco-mayo mixture more intensely before mixing it with the crab.

As a first step, it’s perfectly fine. Were I in a test-kitchen setting, where I had more resources and time to try exploring/improving on it, I think I have some solid leads on what to try next to improve it:

-Bouillon or fish stock instead of water in the curry

-herby greens instead of eggplant

-lime dressing on greens/sauce on the bottom. (Maybe try and make a “thai-tar sauce”, using lime instead of lemon, and some more thai herbs/flavors?)

-up the flavors in the crab cake

Will I do those things? I would say…unlikely in the near future, unless we got some kind of air conditioner for the kitchen: while the ingredient cost and effort wasn’t particularly high, it’s just too hot to try 2-3 repetitions of roughly the same recipe. ESPECIALLY with the risk of burning myself with hot oil again.

But as part of the recipe development process, I think it’s a solid first step, and if you try it at home, I hope you try and tweak it, and let us know if the changes made something great.

THURSDAY: MAYBE AN LAP ON THAILAND? I DON’T KNOW: IT’S STILL STUPIDLY WARM, AND I’M TRYING TO DO LIKE, SIX THINGS TODAY.

MONDAY: MAYBE SOME LAMB BURGERS, MAYBE SOMETHING MORE COMPLICATED.

Recipe

Curry Crab Burger

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

                The Thai Curry Crabby Patty

1 pound crab meat, preferably lump, cleaned of shell fragments or gills.

4 green onions, green parts only, minced

1 tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro (I used Parsley, because of Nate’s hate for the Cilantro)

1 tbsp red curry paste

1.5 tsp minced lemongrass

2+ tbsps. Plain dry breadcrumbs

2 tbsp Coconut Milk

2 tbsp Mayonnaise

1/8th tsp white pepper

½ tsp salt

1 egg

¼ cup flour for coating

¼ cup vegetable oil for frying

                The Curry Veggies

½ cup eggplant, sliced into strips roughly 1” long, ½” wide

¼ cup bamboo shoots

1 green pepper, cut into strips

50 grams (around 3 tbsp) red curry paste

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1.5 cups coconut milk

¼ cup water or stock

1 tsp lime juice

                The rest of the burger

Buns

4-6 round slices of eggplant

¼ tsp salt

Chow mein noodles (optional, I guess)

Preparation

1. Mix together all the ingredients for the Crab cakes except the oil and flour, and place in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.

2. While crab cake mixture is chilling, prepare the curry veggies: over medium-high heat, bloom the red curry paste in the vegetable oil for 1-2 minutes, until fragrant. Add 1 cup coconut milk, and bring to a simmer. Add vegetables, and cook for 10 minutes. Add remaining coconut milk, lime juice, and stock, and simmer an additional 5-10 minutes, until vegetables are soft, and curry is to your desired thickness.

3. While vegetables are simmering, sprinkle salt over eggplant slices, and let sit for 10 minutes.

4. Fry the crab cakes: bring the oil to a shimmer in a large skillet over high heat, while you form the crab cake mixture into 4-6 patties, dusting with flour. Place the floured cakes in the shimmering oil, and fry for 3-5 minutes per side.

5. Assemble the burgers: place the eggplant slice on the bottom bun, then the crab-cake patty, then curry veggies, and chow mein noodles (if using) Top with bun, and serve.