Crab and Avocado Sandwiches with Mango Coulis

When the Palm Desert Food & Wine asked to pair me up with one of five headlining chefs doing demos at the festival to re-create their recipe using the SideChef app, I was very curious as to whom they would pair me with. When I got Cat Cora, I was ecstatic!

Not only is she insanely talented in the kitchen, but she was the first female Iron Chef on Iron Chef America. That’s definitely someone to look up to, as a female culinary enthusiast!

I was anxious to see what recipe I would be making, and boy was I shocked when I got a huge bag of Whole Foods ingredients, hand delivered fresh to my doorstep thanks to SideChef. When I peeked into the bag (while Snapchatting it all live at MsTanayaG), I was definitely surprised, in both a good way and a kind of sad way initially. You see, it was all the ingredients for Cat Cora’s Crab and Avocado Sandwiches with Mango Coulis.

While that sounds pretty incredible, the only problem was that I wouldn’t be able to taste any of it! You see, a few years back, I developed a slight (and VERY unfortunate) allergy to crustaceans, including crab! Quite the ironic bummer, right?

Still, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to work with an ingredient I normally wouldn’t choose to cook, for obvious reasons. So I got prepping, and followed the super simple step-by-step instructions with crisp visuals and audio cues on the SideChef app to create the full dish with all three components!

Here’s a quick video of some of the steps that went into making the dish:

In the end, I had essentially created a slider made with warm, crispy crab cake buns, cool, refreshing avocado salsa, and a tangy-sweet mango coulis to bring it all together. I can only imagine how it all tasted together (I definitely tried the avocado salsa & mango coulis!), but according to my family for whom I cooked the meal, it turned out “incredibly delicious!”

What I love just as much as eating, is making something with my own hands to feed the people I love. So that worked out well, allergy or not! Also, shoutout to Cat Cora for sharing this post with her awesome followers… I hope I did your recipe justice! 😉

So what’s the deal with the giveaway, you ask? Well, I’m giving away TWO PAIRS of tickets to the Palm Desert Food & Wine Festival happening all of next weekend! AND, the grand prize winner will receive VIP tickets! To win, do ONE or BOTH of the following by 11:59 p.m. PST tonight:

1. Follow @tanayas.table on Instagram and tag 3 friends in the comments of my crab cake slider photo.
2. Subscribe to my Nom channel at Nom.com/TanayasTable and pop in to say hi on my live show tonight from Hollywood at 7:30 p.m. PST! It’s interactive, so you can ask us questions and more. 🙂

Winners will be announced tomorrow on those platforms! GOOD LUCK!!

For the full recipe to make these crab cakes at home, download the SideChef app. They’re celebrating a whopping 1 million meals made through the app by donating 1,000 meals to charity… and they will donate 3,000 if they make it into the top 10 in the app store! So let’s make it happen to feed more people who really need it, guys.

If you do make this recipe by Cat Cora through SideChef, please do let me know how they turn out for you! Big thank you to PDFW, SideChef and Iron Chef Cat Cora for the fun collaboration.

Until next time, cheers! ❤