While down on the Outer Banks we went out to dinner at Mike Dianna's Grillroom in Corolla. The meal ranged from excellent to fair with the crab cakes on the excellent end of the spectrum. Great crab cakes are simple: they are made with heaps of fresh crab meat, cooked fast and served hot right off the stove or out of the broiler. Those are the keys. Simple, fresh, fast, hot. The more junk you add to them, the colder they get, the further from perfection they stray. Here are two great recipes:

Dean and Deluca Crab Cakes - Heavy on the crab meat, this recipe features no bread crumbs or crackers.  
Pam Anderson's Perfect Crabcakes - Saltine crackers for the breading plus green onions make this recipe a winner

Hot food loses its appeal when the thermometer pushes past 80F and humidity is high. Cool foods are the thing. At the end of a hot summer beach day, when my body is sticky with sunscreen, sweat and sand and my mouth is parched and dry, give me a cool cerveza and a bowl of ceviche.  According to Damian Barr, ceviche (pronounced say-veech-eh) is the new sushi... or sashimi as the case may be. It's a Latin American mixture of raw seafood that's been marinated in lime juice and perked up further with chilis. The seafood in ceviche isn't technically raw, it's cured by the lime (sometimes lemon) juice. There is no actual cooking thus there's no hot stove - a big plus in a summer house without central ac.  The main flavors in ceviche are salt, lime and chili.  It's served cold, usually with something crunchy such as lettuce or daikon.  Firm fish works best and the fish must be absolutely fresh, never previously frozen, otherwise the citrus juice isn't absorbed. Shrimp, squid, octopus, scallops and lobster are all taste great ceviche style.  Here are some links to recipes:

Chez Wong's ceviche (easy)
Emeril's ceviche  intermediate)
Grilled Mahi Mahi ceviche style by Alton Brown (easy)

More about ceviche in Wikipedia

James Hook & Company, a landmark on Boston's waterfront since 1925 was destoyed in a fire on Friday. 60,000 lbs of lobster and a part of waterfront history were destoyed totally with damage estimated at $5,000,000. No people were hurt. The Hook family has resisted many offers to sell its valuable financial district real estate in the past and is planning to rebuild at the same location. Let's hope they do and rebuild it with the same crusty vibe. "We will set up a trailer, we will set up a tent. I don't know what we are going to do, but we will find a way," said Edward Hook II. "Once this mess is cleaned up, we will find a way." 

Here are some links to the story:

Boston Globe
Associated Press
James Hook & Company website

Europeans and Americans have both faced declining populations of wild sea bass. Americans responded with catch limits and other steps to successfully rebuild the wild population. Europeans responded with fish farms. Paul Greenburg tells the story in the NY Times Magazine: "'Socrates,' I asked, 'how do you tell a wild sea bass from a farmed sea bass?' We were at a restaurant northeast of Athens a few months ago. A grilled, whole European sea bass (a k a branzino) lay on a plate before us. Socrates Panopoulos, a hatchery manager of the Greek-owned Selonda company, let his junior scientists answer first...." more