Cucumbers and Crabmeat

Tonight's supper is going to be all about summer; these glorious days when the sun still has some heat in it, yet it's incredibly comfortable to be out on the deck. Tom and I have even starting braving the elements, i.e. cats and the dreaded occasional fly, and enjoying eating outside in the evening. Having a hummingbird stage show makes it all the nicer.
We both like cucumbers, and Tom has become a very good sport about chilled soups, so tonight I fixed a cucumber soup. Nothing is much easier to fix; all it takes are cucumbers (I used 1 1/2), a couple of green onions, 1/2 c. chicken broth, some salt and pepper to taste. You just take all these things (be sure to remove the seeds and peel from the cucumbers), dice them up a bit, and pour everything into a food processor and blend. I added just a bit of cream to make it more silky. It lightens it up a bit, but adds a nice subtle flavor. I put in in the fridge to chill a bit and it was ready to go once everything else was in place.
I had 1/2 a cucumber left, so I decided to try to deep fry it; thought it would go well with the cucumber soup. I figure we deep fry pickles, so what the heck? I used a nice Louisiana shrimp/vegetable mix that you wet down and then dip again in the dry mix. It works great on almost anything I've ever tried to deep fry.
For the main course, I made crab cakes. Due to the "land locked" position we find ourselves in, I made do with canned crab meat...it worked great. To the 2 cans of crabmeat I added about 1/2 c. of breadcrumbs (I had some French bread, so I just pulled it apart into tiny pieces, an egg, and a mixture of about 1/8 of finely chopped red bell pepper, some celery salt, and 1/8c. red onion finely chopped (I sauteed these three items just a bit to soften them). I heated some oil, patted out the cakes, coated them in some flour, and put them to fry on medium heat. While they were cooking, I make a sauce to use with the crab cakes and the fried cucumbers. This was made out of mayonnaise, Thai hot chili sauce, and a bit of lemon juice--mix to your taste.
Finally, a quick trip to the broiler for some sliced almonds to warm slightly--these were dropped on top of the cucumber soup.
The nice thing about any recipe is that you can modify to your heart's content; I know I did on these recipes this evening...so, feel free to play and enjoy!

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