Palace Café's Crabmeat Cheesecake
A decadent favorite from the Dickie Brennan Restaurant Group's Canal Street staple
8 ×
¾ cup pecans
1 cup all-purpose flour
¼ tsp. salt
5 tbsp. cold butter
½ cup onion, diced small
1 tbsp. butter
4 oz. crabmeat
8 oz. room temperature cream cheese
⅓ cup Creole cream cheese or sour cream
2 eggs
1 tbsp. Crystal Hot Sauce
Koster salt and white pepper, to taste
1 lemon, peeled and quartered
½ cup Worcestershire sauce
½ cup Crystal Hot Sauce
½ cup heavy whipping cream
4 sticks butter, softened
2 cups sliced mixed wild mushrooms
3 tbsp. butter, softened
24 crab claw fingers (for topping)
Kosher salt and cracked black pepper, to taste (for topping)
Randy Schmidt, courtesy of Palace Café
Palace Café's Crabmeat Cheesecake, featured in The Pot & Palette Cookbook II.
Dickie Brennan’s Palace Café has been a Canal Street staple, for locals and tourists alike, since the early 1990s. Whether you’re dining outside in Canal Street, or inside, the Palace Café brings your taste buds into the old world of New Orleans. This recipe for crabmeat cheesecake will melt in your mouth. Make sure to use Crystal Hot Sauce for a balance of sweet and spicy that will bring this cheesecake into a world all its own.
Prepare the pecan crust. Preheat the oven to 350°F. and lightly grease a 9-inch tart pan. Finely grind the pecans in a food processor, then add the flour and salt and pulse to mix well. Transfer to a large mixing bowl and cut in the butter, working butter into flour with two knives, until dough is in crumbs the size of small peas. Add 3 tablespoons of ice water and evenly incorporate into the mixture (which should remain crumbly). Roll out the dough to 1/8-inch thickness on a lightly floured surface. Press the dough into the prepared tart pan, starting with the sides and then the bottom. Bake the crust for 20 minutes, or until golden. (Note: The dough can be made ahead of time. If doing so, wrap dough tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate. Allow dough to come to room temperature before rolling out.)
Prepare the filling. Preheat the oven to 300°F. In a saucepan, over moderate heat, sauté the onion in the butter until translucent. Add the crabmeat and cook just until heated through, then remove from heat. In a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, or in a mixing bowl with a wooden spoon, blend the regular cream cheese until smooth. Add the Creole cream cheese and mix well. Add the eggs, one at a time, until blended. Gently fold in the crabmeat mixture. Stir in the Crystal Hot Sauce and season with kosher salt and white pepper. Spoon filling into the baked crust. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until firm to the touch.
Make the Meunière sauce. Combine the lemon, Worcestershire sauce and Crystal Hot Sauce in a heavy saucepot and reduce over medium heat, stirring constantly with a wire whisk, until mixture becomes thick and syrupy. Whisk in the heavy whipping cream. Reduce heat to low and slowly blend in the butter pieces, one cube at a time, until each piece is completely incorporated before adding additional butter. (This process is called “mounting the butter.”) Remove from heat and continue to stir. Season with kosher salt and white pepper to taste. Strain through a fine strainer and keep warm, covered.
Finish the topping. Sauté the mushrooms in the butter until tender and all moisture has cooked off. (Excess water from the mushrooms may break your sauce if it isn’t cooked off.) Stir the mushrooms into the meunière sauce. Melt the remaining tablespoon butter in the pan used to sauté the mushrooms and warm the crab claws over low heat. Season with kosher salt and cracked black pepper.
To serve, slice the cheesecake and top each piece with warm Meunière sauce and three crab claws.
This recipe is featured in The George Rodrigue Foundation for the Arts' cookbook, The Pot & the Palette II. Read more about the cookbook and the GRFA's initiatives to support the arts in Louisiana in our story from the December 2023 issue, here.
