Poor Girl’s Trip to the Mexican Riviera

I call this dish Poor Girl’s Trip to the Mexican Riviera, and it takes about 15 minutes to make.

What You’ll Need

• an avocado
• a box of corn muffin mix
• about a cup of fake crab meat
• half a stick of butter
• a slicing tomato
• about half a cup of grape tomatoes, quartered
• sour cream
• mayonnaise
• onion
• chives
• jalapenos
• salt to taste

Avocado Cream

You’re going to start with the avocado cut in half. Put the avocado into a bowl and keep the skins. Then I mix in a capful of lemon juice, a pinch of salt, a little bit of jalapeño seeds if you like a bit of heat, and a larger spoonful of mayonnaise.

Hold back a little on the mayonnaise. You want it to be a cream consistency, not a sauce. You can put that back into the avocado shell with a little bit of chives on top to look pretty.

The Butter and Crab

The next thing that you’ll want to do is to grab that butter. I have a full stick of butter there, but you’ll only need a half.

Take half a stick of butter and put that into a small saucepan or a small hot pot cooker. And melt that up well. Mix about half of that melted butter with the Jiffy corn muffin mix. You can use whatever corn muffin mix you like, but the recipe that I have here is for the Jiffy corn muffin mix. So if you use a different one, just adjust accordingly. So I put about two tablespoons worth of the butter in the corn muffin mix, which is not in the instructions per se, but that’s how I do it.

Then the remaining butter, I let it warm up in the hot pot. I take about a cup of the fake crab meat, and I actually put that in the mini griddle, and I cook it until it browns. About 5 minutes. If you don’t have a griddle, you can either skip that step or use a frying pan.

I like the griddle because it gets hotter than the hot pot and will give it a nice sear which will give you some flavor and some visual appeal.

Making the Corn Cakes

Next, I mix the corn muffin mix and the butter in a bowl, add an egg, about half a cup of grape tomatoes cut into quarters, jalapeño pepper diced, about a dollop of sour cream, a tablespoon or so of chives, and a spoonful or two of the prepared onions. If you don’t have that, you can just put fresh onions in there, probably about half of a small onion. And you can add whole kernel corn as well, about a half cup or so.

I didn’t add any milk because I used butter. But you can either add about a quarter of a cup of water or milk. You want it to be the consistency of pancake batter. Start with less and add more if needed. Mix well.

And now you’re ready to put your corn cakes on the griddle. Move the crab that’s been cooking in the griddle over to the butter in the hot pot and add about a capful of lemon juice to that as well.

Cook the corn mixture like pancakes. You can do this in a frying pan if you don’t have a griddle. I cook them for about 5 minutes until they’re brown on both sides. If you’re using a frying pan, you’ll need to flip them over, so it may take a little longer. You can touch the top of it, and if it bounces back, the middle is cooked. If it makes a divot in the middle, it’s still a little wet. You’ll get about 4 corn cakes out of this recipe.

Plating and Leftovers

Once they’re done, you’re ready to plate, or you can serve it family style, and everyone can take their own.

To plate it, start with a corn cake, add a slice of tomato, add the crab on top of that, and top with a spoonful of avocado cream. I added a bit of sour cream as well. I sprinkled with salt and added some pepper flakes for heat.

I had some leftovers, so I diced the remaining tomatoes and crab, added them to the avocado cream in the skin, and made a low-carb version of the dish. You can always refrigerate it and have it for lunch the next day.

All right, enjoy. Thanks.