Corn and Crab Beignets with Yaji Aioli

Marcus Samuelsson’s latest book, The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food, is best summed up as “an invitation to a listening party that everyone is welcome to join – a celebration to discover the breadth, depth, and diversity of Black cooks.” I recently received a review copy. It’s a collection of recipes inspired by the work of African American chefs, culinarians, and writers. Because “The contributions of Black people in this country have always been underdocumented and undervalued,” this book shines a light on some of the inspiring work in the food industry in an effort toward social change. The chapters are organized by theme as it relates to the food industry individuals highlighted. And, after an introduction to each individual, there are recipes that speak to that person’s history or current work. The first chapter is Next, and it includes stories of cutting edge work that shows what’s possible and what’s to come. Of course, I was delighted to see pastry chef Tavel Bristol-Joseph of Austin’s Emmer and Rye included here, and the recipes that follow his story are based on flavors from Guyana where he was born. There’s Coconut Fried Chicken with Sweet Hot Sauce and Platanos and Smoked Venison with Roti and Pine Nut Chutney. And, what’s so interesting throughout the book is the variety of dishes. Following the venison, you’ll find Quick Salted Salmon with Carrot Broth and Mushrooms in honor of Adrienne Cheatham’s elegance and grace. She worked at Le Bernardin and was also Samuelsson’s executive chef at Red Rooster. I’m always drawn to Cheryl Day’s sweet creations and the recipes she inspired here include Baobab-Buttermilk and Broiled Peach Popsicles and Sweet and Wild Berry Pie with C & C Crumble that involves a mix of cassava flour and coconut. Also, the seafood recipes kept getting my attention. I was craving the Grilled Piri Piri Shrimp with Papaya and Watermelon Salad, Crab and Chile Chitarra Pasta, and Citrus Scallops with Hibiscus Tea. And, that seafood craving led me to the Corn and Crab Beignets with Yaji Aioli. 

These savory beignets were inspired by BJ Dennis of Charleston, South Carolina where he works to preserve and celebrate the food of the Gullah Geechee culture. His cooking along with his research into ingredients prepared and grown by descendants of West Africa focuses attention on dishes “driven by produce and seafood, rich and full of deep flavor.” I was able to get some lovely, jumbo lump crabmeat from a nearby seafood market. But, since corn isn’t in season yet, I opted for frozen. Making the beignet batter is a simple enough process of stirring everything together, and frying is quick and easy once you have everything ready. I use a paper grocery bag cut open and folded in half on top of a baking sheet as a resting spot for anything just fried. Use a pan with plenty of space, and give the oil enough time to come up to temperature. Then, frying in batches goes by in a flash. For the aioli, I first made the yaji spice blend with roasted peanuts, ground ginger, salt, paprika, garlic and onion powders, and cayenne pepper. The peanuts were ground in a small food processor until finely chopped. The spices were added and processed to combine. This mixture should remain dry and not become peanut butter. A generous tablespoon of this spice mix was added to about a cup of aioli. 

Crispy beignets were a decadent treat, and the rich, spiced aioli contrasted the texture perfectly. Happily, we had some leftovers, and they do reheat well in the oven. There’s so much more to explore in this book. From Fonio Stuffed Collards with Pepper Sambal and Sauce Moyo to Montego Bay Rum Cake, I’m going to enjoy the journey from one page to the next. 

Corn and Crab Beignets with Yaji Aioli 

Excerpted from The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food by Marcus Samuelsson with Osayi Endolyn. Recipes with Yewande Komolafe and Tamie Cook. Copyright © 2020 by Marcus Samuelsson. Photographs by Angie Mosier. Used with permission of Voracious, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. New York, NY. All rights reserved. 

BJ Dennis grew up in Charleston, picking okra and fishing in the creeks for shrimp and crabs. The crab beignets here are paired with an aioli made with yaji, the ultra-popular West African spice blend. 

MAKES ABOUT 24 BEiGNETS 

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter 

2 cups fresh corn kernels (from 2 ears) 

2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives 

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 

1/2 cup cornmeal 

2 teaspoons baking powder 

1/2 teaspoon ground cayenne 

1 teaspoon kosher salt 

1 cup buttermilk 

1 large egg 

8 ounces lump crabmeat 

Vegetable oil, for frying 

Yaji Spice Aioli 

Melt the butter in a medium sauté pan set over medium heat. Add the corn and cook until softened slightly, 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer to a large mixing bowl, stir in the chives, and set aside until cool. 

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, corn- meal, baking powder, cayenne, and salt. Add the buttermilk and egg to the corn and stir to combine. Add the flour mixture and stir to combine. Add the crabmeat and fold to combine. 

Heat 1 1/2 inches oil in a large pot or deep fryer to 375°F. Place a paper towel–lined cooling rack in a baking sheet and set aside. 

Using a tablespoon measure or a 1/2-ounce scoop, carefully place scoops of batter into the oil, four or five at time. (Work in batches to avoid overcrowding the beignets in the oil.) Fry, turning frequently, until the beignets are golden brown and cooked through the center, 5 to 7 minutes. Transfer the cooked beignets to the prepared cooling rack to drain and cool slightly. 

Serve warm with the aioli for dipping.

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Stuffed Mirlitons

The International Rescue Committee, which responds to humanitarian crises to help people rebuild their lives, has a program called New Roots that assists refugees with growing fresh produce for themselves and their communities.

“The IRC’s New Roots program is focused on connecting refugees with the land so they can grow their own fresh produce for themselves and for their families, connect with their local communities, and, in some cases, sell their produce at local farmers markets and to local businesses. To date, the IRC has been instrumental in connecting refugees with gardens or farms in eight of the cities where we assist refugees and we would like to see New Roots expand across our network (we resettle refugees in 22 cities across the country).”

They have a fundraising goal of $45,000, and they’re getting closer to it each day. One of the eight cities with an active New Roots program is Dallas where a pre-existing community garden that had fallen into disuse was restored two years ago. Currently, a group of women from Bhutan who had former gardening knowledge are growing enough produce to provide for family meals and to sell at White Rock Local Market. Jim Stokes, the Employment Supervisor in the Dallas office, explained: “It’s a nice way to empower these ladies who have skills.” Some of the most popular vegetables being grown are long beans, Malabar spinach, and pumpkin or squash vine tips. I didn’t even know squash vines could be eaten, but I was sent a recipe for vines that are cut into one-inch lengths and sauteed with mushrooms, bell pepper, tomato slices, and lots of spices including Szechuan pepper. I can't wait to try this as soon as I can get some vine tips. Edible Dallas/Fort Worth recently included a story about this New Roots garden, and a type of squash that goes by many names. The ladies from Bhutan call it iskus, but it’s also known as chayote or mirliton. I remembered a cooking class I attended where I learned a recipe for stuffed mirliton that I had never made at home. It was time to try cooking this squash.

Mirlitons are pear-shaped with a squeezed-in end that looks like it’s smiling at you. They look like they would have the texture of a zucchini, but the flesh is actually firmer and requires a little more cooking time. Hollowing them out, mixing the chopped and cooked flesh with seafood, and stuffing the shells is a common use of this squash in Louisiana. Ham is usually involved, but I, of course, skipped it. My version of the stuffing is a mix of chopped shrimp, crab meat, diced sweet peppers, onion, garlic, parsley, oregano, thyme, panko, and egg. The stuffing in the squash shells is topped with breadcrumbs tossed with parmesan, parsley, and oregano before being baked.

If you happen to be in the Dallas area, stop by White Rock Local Market for the fresh, locally-grown vegetables you expect to find and maybe a type of squash or two you haven’t seen before. And, learn more about the IRC and the New Roots program online.

Stuffed Mirlitons
Adapted from a recipe by Sara Roahen for Central Market Cooking School.

4 mirlitons
1 cup panko breadcrumbs
1 teaspoon fresh oregano
1/4 cup finely grated parmesan cheese
pinch cayenne
2 tablespoons plus 1/4 cup parsley, finely chopped
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for drizzling
1 cup onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup sweet pepper, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
1 fresh bay leaf 
3/4 pound shrimp, peeled, deveined, and diced
1 egg, beaten
1/4 pound crabmeat
salt, pepper, and hot sauce to taste

Place whole mirlitons in a large pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil, and cook for 20-30 minutes until tender when poked with a knife. Drain, and let mirlitons cool. Cut each mirliton in half lengthwise, remove the pits, and carefully scoop out the squash flesh leaving some attached to the skin for sturdiness. Dice the squash flesh, and place the mirliton shells in a baking dish.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Mix together the panko breadcrumbs, oregano, parmesan, cayenne to taste, and two tablespoons of the parsley, and set aside.

In a large saute pan over medium heat, melt the butter with one tablespoon of olive oil. Add onion and sweet peppers, and cook for a few minutes until softened. Add garlic, thyme, bay leaf, remaining parsley, and diced mirliton. Cook over medium-low heat, white stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are all completely tender, about 15 minutes. Add shrimp and cook until opaque which should only take a minute or two. Then, add the beaten egg, about three-fourths of the breadcrumb mixture, and salt, pepper, and hot sauce to taste. Stir to combine, and then gently fold in the crabmeat so as to keep the lump meat intact.

Divide the stuffing among the mirliton shells, mounding it up, and sprinkle the remaining breadcrumb mixture on top. Drizzle the mounds with olive oil, and bake for about 30 minutes or until the topping is golden brown. If you’re not happy with the color of the breadcrumb topping after 30 minutes, you can always place the stuffed mirlitons under the broiler for a few minutes for more browning.

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Thai Style Crab Cakes

I’ve made crab cakes many times in the past. I’ve made different sizes and mixed up the ingredients in small ways, but nothing really new and different in any significant way ever happened with my approach. Then, I saw Mark Bittman’s NY Times article about Thai style crab cakes, and there was a new and different twist that I simply had to try. His idea was to mimic Thai fish cakes that use pureed fish as a binder, but he used shrimp instead of fish for a better melding of flavors with crab. A few more ingredients common in Thai cuisine were added, and he had a new kind of crab cake. I had prepared a shopping list with this recipe in mind, and we stopped off at the farmers’ market before going to the grocery store. I was excited to find locally grown Thai chiles and Thai basil to use in the crab cakes.

For one pound of lump crab meat, six medium, raw shrimp were pureed in a food processor. The pureed shrimp were added to a mixing bowl with a little fish sauce, one egg, some chopped green onions, cilantro leaves, a seeded and chopped Thai chile or two, minced fresh ginger, chopped Thai basil, and the crab. This was carefully mixed together while trying not to break up the crab too much. Two to three tablespoons of fresh bread crumbs were to be added, and I think I used even less than that. The shrimp and egg held the mixture together very well, and the breadcrumbs were almost unnecessary. The cakes were formed and refrigerated for 30 minutes or so and then were dredged in flour before being fried for a few minutes on each side.

In the article, Bittman suggested serving the cakes with a dipping sauce of fish or soy sauce with lime juice, etc. or possibly with a mayonnaise mixed with fish sauce. I stirred together a quick sauce with mayonnaise, fish sauce, lime juice, and chopped Thai basil. These crab cakes were fantastic with a little dollop of that on top, but they were so full of flavor, they were also great all by themselves. I’m definitely hanging on to this recipe and foresee cute, little, mini versions of these cakes being served at upcoming holiday parties.

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Crab Salad with Chilled Gazpacho Sauce

A few years ago, I decided I had to have a copy of A Return to Cooking. As luck would have it, it wasn’t easy to find a new one, but I finally located one online. Earlier this year it was released in paperback with a new cover. I’m not sure if the this new version contains updated information or a new intro or if it’s just a paperback version of the original. The book is about Eric Ripert getting back to what he loves about cooking as he prepares meals away from the restaurant in four different locations. For the winter segment of the book, he cooked in Puerto Rico, and the tropical influence on those dishes made them very appealing to me. At the beginning of the chapter, Ripert described pique which is a sweet, spicy condiment made from fermented pineapple stock, chiles, and garlic. He mentioned it’s used on fish at Le Bernardin, and he planned to use it in several dishes while cooking in Puerto Rico. I had been thinking about pique and had wanted to try making it since I first the read the book. I never found the time or worked up the courage to try it until recently. I’ve never seen pique bottled, and I’ve never heard other chefs or food writers mention it, so all I knew was what was in this book. Two weeks ago while shopping at Whole Foods, I spotted a pile of organic pineapples and decided it was time to make pineapple stock for pique.

I followed the instructions exactly. Pineapple skins were boiled and then strained. That stock was added to a jar with hot Thai and habanero chiles, garlic, oregano, and peppercorns. It was topped with a barrier of olive oil and was left to ferment for one week at room temperature with a cheesecloth covering. Bubbles should have formed and then subsided after a week. No bubbles formed in my pique. It sat, did nothing, smelled like garlic, and the chiles started looking less than appetizing. I decided to play it safe and dump the pique. So, I still don’t really know anything more about this condiment. I had hoped to use it as suggested in the crab salad with chilled gazpacho sauce, but rather than risk a nice bout of food poisoning, I made a substitution instead. Maybe I’ll find a source to purchase pique one of these days, or I might just have to hop on a plane to learn more about it.

In the book, this dish is a lovely, light-colored, delicate-looking thing. What I created is far more garish with a vivid, red sauce, and the darkest green avocados I’ve seen for a while. The topping on the crab salad was supposed to have been finely diced, peeled, green tomatoes. Unfortunately, I arrived a little late at the farmers’ market last weekend, and not only did I miss any chance at finding green tomatoes I almost didn’t get tomatoes at all. One farmer was kind enough to offer me his over-ripe ones that no one else wanted. They were red, juicy, and perfect for pureeing into gazpacho, so I took them. For the topping, I finely diced some seeded, yellow cherry tomatoes and combined them with finely diced, seeded cucumber. It might not have been exactly the flavor that was intended, but the color contrast and the taste of cucumber worked nicely with the dish. Those vegetables were added to finely chopped, preserved lemon, lemon oil, a spicy vinaigrette which I used instead of pique, and salt and pepper. For the sauce, chopped, very ripe in my case, tomatoes were pulsed in the blender. Ripert suggested pulsing so as not to incorporate too much air. The puree was passed through a strainer, and it was seasoned with sherry vinegar and salt and pepper, and that was the sauce.

For the crab salad, mayonnaise was whisked with some vinaigrette, chopped chives were added, and lump crabmeat was gently stirred into the mix. To match the presentation in the book, a ring mold was needed, but I used a biscuit cutter. The crab salad was molded on the plate inside the biscuit cutter with the yellow tomato-cucumber mixture on top, gazpacho sauce was poured all around, the biscuit cutter mold was removed, and sliced avocado was added. Despite how fussy it sounds and how pretty it looked in the book, it was actually very easy to prepare. Because each part was chilled before being plated, it made a refreshing first course for a summer night’s meal.

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