Shrimp Cakes With Two Sauces
Now that everything is in full season, it's difficult to decide what to prepare first. We have a freezer full of peach ice cream and peach sorbet, corn cut from the cob, butter beans are on the horizon, eggplant is in abundance and shrimp is readily available. We won't even discuss what has been going on with all those tomatoes.
We have always enjoyed crab cakes and recently discovered shrimp cakes in a new Williams-Sonoma cookbook by Joanne Weir (Spring, Recipes Inspired by Nature's Bounty, Weldon Owen, Inc. 1997). Ms. Weir is also the author of another favorite cookbook that we have frequently cited in this column, From Tapas to Meze (Crown Publishers, Inc., 1994). The shrimp cake recipe was accompanied by a jalapeno tartar sauce that we fixed but didn't feel was the perfect complement to the shrimp cakes. We have chosen, instead, to include an avocado butter which is wonderful with crab cakes along with a roasted red pepper cream that serves as another subtle accompaniment to the shrimp. The eggplant recipe is from the Tapas cookbook. We would suggest anything with peaches or blueberries as the perfect end to this meal - we will probably offer two or three flavors of sorbet or ice cream to our guests.
