Sometimes these crab cake meals are virtually salads, but for me they’re actually easier (quicker at least) to put onto the table than the real thing, whether the salad is to serve as the whole meal, or only one of its elements.

And there’s almost as much room for improvising as there is in putting together a salad.

To top it off, they’re made by Delores, the wife of Phil, the fisherman. Yup.

Some form or another of this simple crab cake assemblage is a regular on our table, and we never tire of it.

• two crab cakes from PE & DD Seafood (crab, egg, flour, red & green peppers, garlic, salt, pepper, breadcrumbs, mayonnaise, milk, celery, and parsley), defrosted in the refrigerator earlier in the day, heated with a drizzle of olive oil inside a small heavy well-seasoned vintage cast iron pan, 3 to 4 minutes to each side, served on a salsa strewn over a bed of undressed mizuna from Alewife Farm, the salsa composed of 7 large-ish chopped Backyard Farms Maine ‘cocktail tomatoes’ from Whole Foods Market, sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, 8 or so young ramps from Lucky Dog Organic Farm (the bulbs chopped, the greens sliced) that had first been wilted in olive oil inside a small pan, a quarter of a teaspoon of Safinter Pimenton de la Vera smoked picante paprika, and some chopped fresh oregano leaves from Stokes Farm, a bit more chopped oregano placed on top of the cakes, all of it garnished with micro scallion from Two Guys from Woodbridge

• a mix of greens that included much more of the mizuna and some young red mustard, both from Alewife farm, washed in several changes of water, then wilted in a little olive oil in which 2 chopped spring garlic stems from John D. Madura Farm had been allowed to sweat, inside a large antique, high-sided copper pot, seasoned with sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, finished on the plates with a drizzle of olive oil
• slices of an organic multigrain baguette from Bread Alone
• the wine was a California (Lodi) white, Matt Iaconis Lodi Albariño 2017, from Naked Wines
• the music was Pierre-Laurent Aimard playing Messiaen’s ‘Catalogue d’oiseaux’, or at least most of it