Crab Cakes and Scalloped Sweet Potatoes

I just ate crab cakes and scalloped sweet potatoes.

What the hell is that? Two of my all-time favorite dishes: scrumptious crab cakes made from scratch using my sister's recipe and layers of thinly-sliced sweet potatoes, baked in a pan with butter, milk, and cheese.

It's Wednesday, and at my house, that means Top Chef. (Wednesday at my house used to mean back-to-back episodes of Beverly Hills 90201 and Melrose Place with a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor, but I digress...) Last week, Top Chef fanatics Cassie and Carl decided to honor their favorite show by preparing dinner. The two chefs commandeered the kitchen, pored over cookbooks, and created an ambitious menu of crab cakes, scalloped sweet potatoes, and zucchini bread.

Four hours later--after a couple of frantic phone calls from the supermarket, a few culinary consultations with me, and a good amount of bickering--the meal was served and the kitchen was trashed. I would find bits of grated zucchini and cheese under the toaster oven for days to come.

Why did I eat this? It was, in the immortal words of Backpack, ¡delicioso! And not having to cook? Priceless. Though the chefs had some trouble keeping the crab cakes together while frying them in butter, they still tasted great. The sweet potatoes were perfect, even though the salt and pepper were inadvertently omitted from the recipe. And the zucchini bread...

Ah, the zucchini bread. Made with fresh, neighbor-inflicted produce and chocolate chips, this dessert had the potential to be awesome, but something went horribly awry. The inside of the loaf baked normally, but the edges and bottom came out dark and gooey, resembling something that washed up on the shores of the Gulf Coast. I'm not sure what went wrong; perhaps the chocolate chips sank and melted along the sides of the pan or the oven temperature was wrong. I didn't inspect the damage closely because I was too full to sample the bread and Top Chef was about to air. Carl and girls, however, enjoyed large slices of warm zucchini bread - despite its sad, homely appearance - while marveling at the bizarro ingredients featured in the episode's Quickfire Challenge. (Yak? Really? Is that even legal?)

Many thanks to my hard-working chefs! I can't wait to see - and taste! - what other culinary delights await this season.

Satisfaction rating: 10