30 Nov 2018

Julie Biuso's barbecued crab cakes with fresh garlic

From Afternoons, 3:07 pm on 30 November 2018

If you can get your hands on fresh new-season garlic, you'll find it quite different to the long-life stuff – milder, juicier and easier to crush, says Julie Biuso.

Generally, it's older garlic that people have difficulty digesting – in particular, that green shooty part in the middle  – so pick that out.

Julie uses 10 cloves of fresh garlic in her barbecued crab cakes with Cambodian dressing, which she was first introduced to by some Cambodian visitors to Waiheke Island.

She shares the recipe and chats to Jesse Mulligan.

Crab Cakes

Crab Cakes Photo: Julie Biuso

Garlic isn't well known as a seasonal food but generally, it is planted on the shortest day of the year and harvested on the longest, Julie says.

The North Island is getting the first of the season right now – most likely grown in the Waikato – and Marlborough garlic will appear in mid to late January.

Freshly dug garlic is less pungent and a bit sweeter than garlic that's been stored for months, Julie says. It also has a different texture – crisper, like an apple.

"When it's freshly dug it's quite moist and the leaves that will become that papery skin on the outside are really beautiful … pearly and gorgeous… there's nothing dry there at all. The little cloves of garlic are pearly and white and smooth."

It's also easy to crush with a round-bladed knife. Don't use a garlic crusher or it will just get stuck in the little barrel.

"New-season garlic – you can use more of it, you offend fewer people and more people can eat it – so why not embrace it?"

Julie's tips for the recipe:

  • Chop the dressing ingredients, don't use a food processor. You want little visible flecks of garlic and chilli.
  • When buying chills, the guide is: bigger the milder, smaller the hotter.
  • Also, the narrower a chilli is at its "shoulders" – where the stalk comes out – the hotter it will be.
  • Don't use standard Meyer lemons – they're not acidic enough for this recipe. Go for a pale yellow, thin-skinned variety like Lisbon.
  • Canned crab meat is fine.
  • When you're blending the crab cake mixture, around 30 pulses will do. (Don't whizz it cause you don't want to make a paste.)

You can find more of Julie Biuso's recipes on her blog Shared Kitchen.