A mother-daughter conversation on food and cooking (mostly)

Monday, October 29, 2007

Shrimp and Grits Away from Home


We went to the beach with some friends this weekend, and there we improvised a meal of shrimp and grits. The meal was also supposed to contain roasted eggplant, which I burned, and a salad, for which our friend couldn't find the lettuce he'd brought home from the grocery store. So it was just the shrimp and grits. I am not normally a cream sauce fan, but people were interested in that, so we made the dish above. I toasted the shrimp shells in a dry pan, then simmered them with white wine and strained the shells out. I made a roux, sauteed shallots in it, and then added the stock and some cream. We cooked the shrimp in a separate skillet and added them at the end, along with diced raw red and yellow bell peppers, green onions, and parsley. We served them over some very seriously coarse red and yellow grits.

I loved the bowls at that beach house.

2 comments:

Kris said...

You were really away from home on this deserted beach--no running to the store for more lettuce and eggplant!

I like the idea of creamy sauce in this instance. A nice variation.

Eva said...

Tee hee! Somewhat isolated, yes, but also inebriated and hungry and thus in no shape to drive to the nearby grocery store.

I think the creaminess of the sauce was tempered by the fresh shrimp stock and the raw veggies.

It was also a sort of organic dish born of discussion between my friend Mel and me and what we had and what we bought. It kind of grew, and we drank too much, and then we ate it and it was tasty.