Spiced salmon cakes

Poor Man's Crabcakes: But Better

Spiced Salmon Cakes are something I made up because of two things:

• Crabmeat is too expensive.
• I had cans of Pink Salmon.

Now working with two crabcake recipes, one that was a deviled version, using Tabasco sauce and mayonnaise; and the other using cracker crumbs-- a dilemma because:

• I Had no saltine crackers.
• I Had no Tabasco Sauce.

I had the Worcestershire Sauce, and the onions, eggs, onions. I had some frozen green peppers, mayo, cayenne powder and I could crush some bran flakes in which to dip the molded patties before frying. Okay, here is what you will need:

1. One can of Pink Salmon (or whatever tint you have) picked over (for hard bones)
2. One medium onion (chopped finely)
3. One egg (beaten)
4. Half cup diced green pepper.
5. One teaspoon Worcestershire sauce (or more for taste)
6. Half teaspoon cayenne powder (or Tabasco sauce) (more or less for taste)
7. Half cup whole wheat flour (or white)
8. One fourth cup mayonnaise.
9. One cup of finely crushed bran flakes (or any cereal or crackers)
10. One tablespoon spicey mustard.
11. One quarter to half cup canola or olive oil (for the frying -- enough to be one centimeter at least deep.

Hint for crushing bran flakes:

Put crackers in an at least 2 cup glass bowl, and then using the bottom of a rounded smaller glass container (glass, cup, bowl) crunch the flakes. (It felt like squeezing broken glass when I tried to crush the flakes by hand!)

Procedure:

Set aside the pulverized bran flakes. Sautee in a small pan -- the onion and green pepper -- just allowing a small amount of caramelizing. Set aside. In another bowl, mix the mayonnaise, cayenne, worcestershire, mustard, egg, and flour. In a larger bowl mix the prepared salmon, the onion/pepper and all the rest of the egg/miscellaneous sauce mixture together.

While your larger frying pan is heating up (I used an electric skillet, because the heat is more even, has its own temperature level {I set to 400 F}) form the conglomeration into about four cakes (patties).

Fry the patties after dipping them in the crushed flakes about 8 minutes on each side, or as they always say: Golden Brown. Be extremely gentle flipping and handling. Take them out and put on towel to take up some of the grease....and you are ready to eat them as they are, or put on bread as a sandwich.

My wife and I raved about how we thought they were like some expensive lunch by some tony seaside joint. Not brag, just fact. Feel free to comment if you try them.