Seafood: March 2008 Archives
NOTE: This post got trashed in the switch to MT4.1, so reposting...
The Brother Martin - St. Augustine football game was this afternoon. We stopped at the grocery on the way home, and I saw some great portobello caps in the produce section. I thought, instead of using a soufflee' ramekin for the crabmeat au gratin, what if I spooned it into a 'shroom? And off we go...
Da Stuff:
1lb lump crabmeat
1/2 pint heavy cream
1 cup white wine
3tbsp flour
yellow onion
green onion
garlic
creole seasoning
white pepper
salt
olive oil or butter for sauteeing
cheddar cheese
Usually a recipe such as this would call for the "holy trinity" of onion, celery, green pepper, but I made some veal with the trinity earlier in the week, so I went with just onion and green onion tonight.
Told ya, these portabello caps were nice! I sliced off the stems, chopped them, and tossed them into the mix.
Sautee the onions, green onion, and mushroom in a bit of olive oil. You can use butter here, but my contriubtion to limiting my development of clogged arteries is to go with olive oil.
Add a bit more butter or olive oil, then sprinkle the flour on top of the translucent onion. This is a quick-and-dirty roux, because we don't need the flour to brown since the finished product is essentially a white sauce.
While making the white sauce, I tossed the 'shrooms under the broiler for a couple of minutes
Add the wine and heavy cream to the onion/flour mixture, then fold in the crabmeat. Remove from the heat.
Taste the finished crabmeat filling for heat content. Add salt, creole seasoning, and white pepper to taste. Be careful with commercial creole seasoning--both Zatarain's and Tony Cachere's are high in salt. If you're sensitive to salt, make your own, or work with the components directly.
spoon the filling into the ramekins, or, in this case, the 'shroom cap.
cover 'em with cheese!
Now, this is why the people who work with my wife don't like me. I spooned some of the filling into a microwavable dish and then topped it with the cheese, which is what I did with the mushroom and the ramekin. Now she's got lunch for a day next week.
Bake in a 350F oven for 10 minutes to melt the cheese and re-heat the filling.
Wife didn't want the other 'shroom, so I chopped it up and sauteed it in some white wine. Add an ear of white corn and a Binder's pistolette, and eat!
The wine was a bit unusual for this dinner, a Moselle Riesling. It worked.
1lb lump crabmeat
1/2 pint heavy cream
1 cup white wine
3tbsp flour
yellow onion
green onion
garlic
creole seasoning
white pepper
salt
olive oil or butter for sauteeing
cheddar cheese
Usually a recipe such as this would call for the "holy trinity" of onion, celery, green pepper, but I made some veal with the trinity earlier in the week, so I went with just onion and green onion tonight.
Told ya, these portabello caps were nice! I sliced off the stems, chopped them, and tossed them into the mix.
Sautee the onions, green onion, and mushroom in a bit of olive oil. You can use butter here, but my contriubtion to limiting my development of clogged arteries is to go with olive oil.
Add a bit more butter or olive oil, then sprinkle the flour on top of the translucent onion. This is a quick-and-dirty roux, because we don't need the flour to brown since the finished product is essentially a white sauce.
While making the white sauce, I tossed the 'shrooms under the broiler for a couple of minutes
Add the wine and heavy cream to the onion/flour mixture, then fold in the crabmeat. Remove from the heat.
Taste the finished crabmeat filling for heat content. Add salt, creole seasoning, and white pepper to taste. Be careful with commercial creole seasoning--both Zatarain's and Tony Cachere's are high in salt. If you're sensitive to salt, make your own, or work with the components directly.
spoon the filling into the ramekins, or, in this case, the 'shroom cap.
cover 'em with cheese!
Now, this is why the people who work with my wife don't like me. I spooned some of the filling into a microwavable dish and then topped it with the cheese, which is what I did with the mushroom and the ramekin. Now she's got lunch for a day next week.
Bake in a 350F oven for 10 minutes to melt the cheese and re-heat the filling.
Wife didn't want the other 'shroom, so I chopped it up and sauteed it in some white wine. Add an ear of white corn and a Binder's pistolette, and eat!
The wine was a bit unusual for this dinner, a Moselle Riesling. It worked.
NPR' s "All Things Considered" did a piece yesterday on the struggling recovery of Louisiana's shrimp industry post-storm. It's interesting that this ran the day after I made quickie Shrimp Caesar Salad:
The story explains that Louisiana shrimpers are still struggling because not only do they have to contend with the issues of storm recovery, but also depressed prices because of foreign shrimp imports. Imported shrimp are everywhere, even in my favorite suburban New Orleans grocery store.
They may be imported from Thailand, but that pound of shrimp was convenient. They weren't cheap, though, at $10/pound. The Caesar salad package is also a quickie item. I don't like the dressings that are usually included with these ready-to-serve salad packages, so I picked up some local Caesar dressing.
Sal and Judy's is a very popular restaurant on the Northshore, and they've branched out into their own line of products. Given the numerous Caesar dressings on the grocery shelf, I punted and went local.
The shrimp were pre-cooked, and that's one of the big issues the local shrimpers have with the imports. The shrimp are farm-raised, then peeled, steamed, and packaged. Unlike New Orleans boiled shrimp, these look good, but they're bland and boring.
This is what makes the difference between bland-and-boring and the shrimp we know and love down here, Crab Boil. It says right on the bottle that Zatarain's Crab Boil is "concentrated," but that's an understatement. When boiling shrimp, the bottle says to use one tablespoon for five pounds of raw shrimp. That's one tablespoon for five pounds of head-on, unpeeled shrimp. In other words, if you spill this stuff, call for a hazmat cleanup.
The Thai shrimp were frozen, so I defrosted them for a few minutes in the microwave. I added two drops of Crab Boil to the water in the container, mixed it all up a bit, and microwaved them on high for a couple of minutes. Boiling the water in the dish generated a good bit of crab-boil steam, which helped improve the flavor.
With the shrimp as done as they'd ever be, it was time to make the salad. The easiest way to make sure you don't put too much dressing on the salad is to pour it in first. Coat the bottom of a mixing bowl with the dressing, then add the lettuce to it.
Add some croutons and toss it all together.
In spite of the crab boil, the shrimp were missing some of the magic, so I sprinkled some creole seasoning over them and the salad. It did give them a bit of a kick as well as adding some more color to the plate.
Total time to fix and serve this is about fifteen minutes.
The bottom line on the shrimp is simple: the imports are boring. In the future, I'll buy raw shrimp and boil or saute them myself. The ease with which these pre-cooked shrimp can be served up makes them tempting, but they're just not the same!
The story explains that Louisiana shrimpers are still struggling because not only do they have to contend with the issues of storm recovery, but also depressed prices because of foreign shrimp imports. Imported shrimp are everywhere, even in my favorite suburban New Orleans grocery store.
They may be imported from Thailand, but that pound of shrimp was convenient. They weren't cheap, though, at $10/pound. The Caesar salad package is also a quickie item. I don't like the dressings that are usually included with these ready-to-serve salad packages, so I picked up some local Caesar dressing.
Sal and Judy's is a very popular restaurant on the Northshore, and they've branched out into their own line of products. Given the numerous Caesar dressings on the grocery shelf, I punted and went local.
The shrimp were pre-cooked, and that's one of the big issues the local shrimpers have with the imports. The shrimp are farm-raised, then peeled, steamed, and packaged. Unlike New Orleans boiled shrimp, these look good, but they're bland and boring.
This is what makes the difference between bland-and-boring and the shrimp we know and love down here, Crab Boil. It says right on the bottle that Zatarain's Crab Boil is "concentrated," but that's an understatement. When boiling shrimp, the bottle says to use one tablespoon for five pounds of raw shrimp. That's one tablespoon for five pounds of head-on, unpeeled shrimp. In other words, if you spill this stuff, call for a hazmat cleanup.
The Thai shrimp were frozen, so I defrosted them for a few minutes in the microwave. I added two drops of Crab Boil to the water in the container, mixed it all up a bit, and microwaved them on high for a couple of minutes. Boiling the water in the dish generated a good bit of crab-boil steam, which helped improve the flavor.
With the shrimp as done as they'd ever be, it was time to make the salad. The easiest way to make sure you don't put too much dressing on the salad is to pour it in first. Coat the bottom of a mixing bowl with the dressing, then add the lettuce to it.
Add some croutons and toss it all together.
In spite of the crab boil, the shrimp were missing some of the magic, so I sprinkled some creole seasoning over them and the salad. It did give them a bit of a kick as well as adding some more color to the plate.
Total time to fix and serve this is about fifteen minutes.
The bottom line on the shrimp is simple: the imports are boring. In the future, I'll buy raw shrimp and boil or saute them myself. The ease with which these pre-cooked shrimp can be served up makes them tempting, but they're just not the same!
