Shrimp Salad

I had a nice lunch planned for John and Kathy today featuring my favorite avocado stuffed with shrimp, but woke up in the middle of the night and remembered that John didn't eat avocado.  I improvised this shrimp salad this morning.  The final menu was curried shrimp salad, white bean salad, homemade bread, plum chutney, and apple crisp with pumpkin ice cream.

Curried Shrimp Salad

1 pound boiled shrimp, some left whole and some chopped coarsely

1 cup chopped cashews

1 cup finely diced celery

3 green onions

Dressing:

3/4 cup mayonnaise 

Juice and zest of one lime

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

Several dashes hot pepper sauce

1-2 teaspoons curry powder

Salt and pepper

Rocky Point Shrimp Cocktail

This was an excellent recipe--I picked it up at the fish counter at Sprouts. I bet it would make perfect tostadas, too.

Stir Fried Shrimp and Vegetables

Tonight I made a pretty good stir fry with shrimp, snow peas, spinach, and rice noodles (and of course garlic and jalapenos). I served it with some baked tofu topped with your peanut sauce.

What I like about this meal was the number of things that came from our garden: spinach, snow peas, cilantro, basil, jalapenos, green onions, and lettuce.

Shrimp Tortilla after Thanksgiving

I somehow managed to not take one single photograph through four days of eating, cooking, and talking about food with Lawson's relatives. We were all socked away in a house in North Carolina miles from anything. In a classic liberal-conservative/Target-Wal*Mart split, Lawson and I worked on the new trail we're cutting up there, while almost everyone else stayed inside or rode ATVs in a circle around the yard.

After all that eating, though, we needed light food yesterday. We saved some leftover shrimp from Saturday night's oyster roast and shrimp boil, so I made a tortilla espanola with them: an onion and four cloves of garlic, sauteed very slowly for about 40 minutes until golden, followed by a diced roasted red pepper, about 15 big cooked shrimp, a handful of parsley, 5 beaten eggs, and salt and pepper. I cooked it in the pan for a few minutes more, then browned the top.

Summertime Noodle Bowls

I think Lawson has made versions of this dish for you and Dad a few times. We made it a few weeks ago; now, looking back, I realize it was the last meal of summer. We had a cold snap...temperatures have dropped into the 30s at night...and while it's clear and beautiful here, it's definitely no longer the season for grilled shrimp and cooling rice noodles and bowls full of fresh herbs.

There are a few consistent ingredients in this dish; the rest depends on what you have around:

• rice vermicelli, soaked and then briefly boiled and rinsed
  
• leafy things: a mixture of fresh herbs and lettuces, especially Thai basil, mint, and cilantro
• crunchy things: bean sprouts, red peppers, sweet onions, and/or cucumbers, attractively cut
• meat and/or tofu, cooked some delicious way
• raw peanuts, chopped
• a sauce made of equal parts lime juice and fish sauce to pour liberally over everything

We just prepare everything and layer it in bowls. Lawson makes a big batch of the sauce in an old vinegar bottle and puts it on the table.

This particular time I bought some local shrimp and Lawson marinated them briefly in lime juice, lemongrass, and some other stuff. We grilled them with the shells on -- something I LOVE but which is not worth it unless the shrimp are really fresh and pretty. Lawson removes the slightly charred shells but I eat the whole shrimp, shell and all.

Nibbling while Rome Burns

As the stock market melted down further today, Grandma and I did our usual weekly shopping--same time, same day of the week--and the stores had only half the usual shoppers. Did they decide to stay at home and not buy food? Was it a citizen protest?

Ironically, lobster tails (Australian) and asparagus were on sale. I made this dish of roasted garlic, tomatoes, asparagus, and lobster with pasta:

1 head of garlic, trimmed and wrapped in foil

4 plum tomatoes, quartered and tossed with olive oil

1 pound asparagus, all tough stalks discarded, and cut in 2-inch lengths

Shrimp or lobster

Pasta for two, cooked and drained

Lemon juice

Fresh oregano and thyme

Salt and pepper

Heat oven to 450 degrees. Put in foil-wrapped garlic.

Ten minutes later, place tomatoes on baking sheet and add to oven. Roast 20 minutes without turning, until slightly black and shriveled.

Add asparagus to pan and roast for a further 10 minutes.

Add shrimp or lobster and roast for a few minutes until done.

Squeeze out garlic into a serving bowl. Mash with lemon juice, herbs, salt, and pepper. Mix in cooked pasta and roasted vegetables and shellfish. Season to taste.

***

We had this with fresh strawberries and dark chocolate. And martinis and sauvignon blanc. I can't shake a kind of doomsday feeling--like we should have had beans just in case.

A Beach Camping Trip

Nothing derails this blog like its two authors meeting up in real life, huh? We had a great time camping, cooking, and drinking with you, Mom (and Dad).


Here's dinner from the second night of our family trip to Edisto Beach State Park: shrimp from Flowers Seafood, marinated in lime juice and assorted spices from your camper (cumin, chile powder, oregano, salt) and grilled over an expensive wood fire; green beans with tomatoes and cheese; and a quinoa pilaf that was surprisingly toasty and nutty for being made in a nonstick pan over a tiny burner. Excellent job with that, Mom.

The firewood was purchased from the Edisto Piggly Wiggly and cost $3.99 for a tiny bundle. It came with a sewn-on carrying handle.

100% oak AND hickory.

I still can't believe all four of us (plus Emily the dog) comfortably ate dinner in your trailer.

Day 3: Carolina Food Only

Here's where everyone else is posting about their week of local food.

Today I was significantly less lame than earlier in the week. I worked at home, so I was able to make a decent lunch:

• Slices of goat cheese rolled in Adluh cornmeal and fried in some bacon drippings
• Chopped garden cucumbers and tomatoes with salt and dill seeds. I remembered early this morning that the dill seeds in the pantry were harvested from the garden a few years back.

Tonight's meal was a shrimp purloo. The local shrimp I bought at Publix were a bit past not very good, but we decided to eat them anyway -- I just didn't use the shells for stock, and I rinsed the shrimp and boiled them quickly before sautéing them. It seemed to kill off the yuck. I'm cavalier about bacteria and food safety, and I'm sure someday it'll bite me, but I hate the idea of throwing away food that someone carefully caught or harvested.

I used summer squash, okra, bell peppers, and a Big Jim chile from the garden -- a little unorthodox for a purloo, but both local and historically Southern. I used Carolina Gold Rice, too, and Caw Caw Creek bacon. And I used a bottle of Thomas Creek Multi Grain Ale, and some garden thyme, parsley, and chives.

Since I haven't been able to find local onions, the purloo was missing that all-important oniony flavor structure. In a rich, savory dish, it's almost like the other flavors hang on the onion -- it kind of stretches everything out and makes it more available for tasting. I'd thought about that before, but tonight it was dramatic. The chives did nothing -- added at the end, they made the dish oniony but didn't add anything more the way real onions would have.

Black pepper would also have been good. And vermouth. But it was fine.

Anyway, those tortillas I so optimistically mentioned last night? They were very much like tasty, crispy chapatti. Because they lacked baking soda or baking powder, they were not soft or pliable.

So today I was finishing up a call to the Adluh Flour company for a totally unrelated reason (Free Times cover story -- watch for it) and nearly slapped my forehead: Adluh Self-Rising Flour. Carolina-grown wheat milled in Columbia fits the challenge guidelines just fine, so those extra ingredients in there can sneak right by the censors. I found it at Bi-Lo, the third grocery store I visited. Honey-sweetened blueberry cobbler, here I come.

Stir-Fried Noodles with Shrimp and Herbs

We have Thai basil and regular basil growing steadily now (except for the Japanese beetles chowing down on them every night), and the All-Local Farmers Market always has local shrimp lately, so I made this herby stir fry. I marinated the shrimp in a little lime juice and fish sauce first. Then I stir fried onions, red peppers, and rice noodles (already soaked and cooked), then stir fried the shrimp and a bunch of basil, then added a sauce of soy sauce, fish sauce, and sugar. I served it over lettuce and more basil, plus some mint.

It was one of my more successful stir fries -- instead of the wok, I used a giant skillet, which made much more sense since we have one of those awful flat-top ranges. Since the skillet was bigger than the burner, I could move things on and off the hot part of the pan just like with a wok over a gas burner.

A Good Dinner Party

We had our friends Ken and Melanie and their baby Andrew over for dinner last Sunday (you can see Andrew's foot in the top left of the picture above). We didn't make plans until Sunday morning, and I happened to have bought enough food during my big weekly Saturday grocery run to cover dinner. It was a fun, spontaneous meal, and much more tasty and successful than dinner parties I've spent all week planning.

Here's what we made, clockwise from top left:

• Salad with fresh orange sections, walnuts, cinnamon, and an orange juice vinaigrette, modeled entirely after your own Moroccan salad. I don't have your recipe, but I guessed, and it turned out very well.
• Chicken wings marinated by Lawson in a mysterious blend that contained star anise and honey and who knows what else and then grilled slowly over charcoal.
• Those white beans with rosemary that I continue to be obsessed with.
• Shrimp, red and yellow peppers, and onions marinated, grilled over high heat, and then tossed with cilantro, more lemon, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

We didn't even miss the starch, because the beans seemed to fill that gap. Even Andrew the Baby tried a bite of beans. He also ate mashed avocado that his parents brought from home.

Shrimp and Avocado Appetizer

This is one of the very nicest things you can do with a beautiful avocado. It's a perfect sit-down first course, and would also make a pretty fancy lunch dish. Here's a picture of a version made with crab instead.

Shrimp-Avocado Salad with Pistachios

1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
20 medium shrimp, cooked and peeled
2 medium-size ripe avocados
2 tablespoons salted pistachios, coarsely chopped

Stir together oil, garlic, and vinegar to make dressing.

Reserve 8 whole shrimp for garnish. Chop remaining shrimp coarsely and add to dressing.

Cut avocados in half. Carefully scoop out flesh and dice, reserving shells. Add diced avocado to shrimp mixture and toss gently to coat. Taste and add salt and pepper if necessary. Refrigerate.

At serving time, mound shrimp mixture in avocado shells on individual serving plates. Top each serving with two whole shrimp and sprinkle with chopped pistachios.

Shrimp Purloo

There are about 14 ways to spell the name of this dish, one of which is "pilau"...but pilau means something quite different in Hawaiian than in South Carolinian. So I giggle every time I see it applied to rice. Shrimp pilau would not be a good thing.

Anyway, purloo, perlow, pilau, whatever. It's good and basic and has deep, deep roots in this region -- all the way back to European contact. I bought some local shrimp at the farmer's market last weekend and decided to make some purloo to use it properly.

I used Louis Osteen's recipe almost to the letter, which is something I almost never do because his recipes are usually far too rich. This one was reasonable.

It started with a stock made from the shells of a pound of shrimp. Shrimp shell stock takes all of 20 easy minutes and has the muskiest, saltiest, most profound odor and flavor...so it's always fun. This recipe used 4 cups of chicken stock plus the shells, some fresh thyme, and two bay leaves.

Then I rendered some bacon in my enameled cast iron Dutch oven, set the bacon aside, and sauteed an onion and a red bell pepper in the fat. I stirred in a cup of rice and sauteed that for a few minutes. Then came a little white wine, and the stock (2 and a half cups, reduced from 4 during the stockmaking), and the bacon. I put it in the oven for 20 minutes with the lid on for the rice to absorb the stock.

At the end I sauteed the shrimp over medium high heat for just a minute before adding them to the purloo. I added some chopped parsley, too. It was basic and good.

Scallop Cakes

I used bay scallops in your shrimp cake recipe, Mom, and they were amazing -- sweet and tender and delicious. And with scallops on sale for $5 a pound, they were pretty economical.

Here's the recipe as you gave it to me a few years ago. Maybe you can post the recipe for the complimentary Cilantro-Lime Mayo.

Chop coarsely in food processor (don’t purée!):

-1 pound raw shrimp, peeled (or scallops, or whatever, I suppose)

Heat:
-1 tablespoon olive oil

Sauté in olive oil until tender, about 8 minutes:
-1/2 cup finely chopped onion

Mix the following with shrimp and onion:
-2 green onions, finely chopped
-2 tablespoons fresh parsley, minced
-1 tablespoon flour
-1 tablespoon lime juice
-1 teaspoon grated lime peel
-1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
-1 teaspoon salt
-1/4 teaspoon pepper
-1 egg, lightly beaten

Form into 4 or 5 patties, 1/2 inch thick. Chill one hour.

Heat oven to 450 degrees. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in large skillet and brown shrimp cakes 2 minutes per side. Transfer to baking sheet and finish cooking in oven until cooked through, 7-10 minutes.

Do you still make these the same way?

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.

Gumbo

Mark arrived for a visit last night, and I made gumbo. Seriously, a food that contains sausage, shellfish, and okra -- could there be anything holier? The recipe was a hybrid of several Prudhomme recipes -- spice mixture from one, okra instructions from another, andouille amounts from a third. I made the stock from several batches of shrimp shells saved up in the freezer and toasted in a dry hot pan before being simmered for about an hour. I added garden tomatoes as well. And we happened to have some leftover smoked chicken, which rounded everything out.

It was the kind of chopping- and stirring-intensive meal perfect for three people standing around in the kitchen drinking too much. We moved from gin and tonics to Yuengling to pinot noir to scotch, and this morning we all feel it more than a little. Fortunately there is gumbo for breakfast.