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Posts Tagged ‘shrimp’

  1. Back to the Blog!

    January 19, 2012 by The Yum Yum

    Totally made a faux black bean and corn chowder with chili beans last night.

    This time, I tossed in shrimp.

     

    So. GOOD.

     

    I ate it with tortilla chips. You know, the chips made from corn meal that have almost no nutritional value in them. Oy.

     

    The big issue with preparing shrimp is that they can potentially become rubbery.

     

    Oddly enough, octopus has the same dilemma: if you cook octopus for about 15 minutes, it becomes tender, but then it becomes rubbery again unless you cook it for about an hour, and then it’s tender deliciousness all night long.

     

    Today, while paying split attention between Racheal Ray and studying Japanese, I had the realization that for someone who writes a blog on food, I’m not nearly involved or obsessed with the Food Network in the way that I should be. But then, I also consider that being a pesco-vegetarian limits the kinds of foods that I can cook; I can’t just turn the TV station to Paula Deen and decide to make whatever she’s making, for instance.

     

    (Butter, butter, sugar, salt, add some chocolate, make a malt…)

    That’s my rendition of Paula Deen doing the witches’ chant in Macbeth.

     

    I do think that even as a pesco-vegetarian who definitely adores vegan-oriented food and organic products that I’m extremely honest about my opinions on those foods. It’s true that the organic Peanut Butter cookies are the best I’ve ever had and that I love the plain cardboard boxes they come in- indeed, I am a fan of simplicity in design with regards to many things.

     

    But there are some foods I’ve had in the past that were just awful. The poblano faux rice meatball monstrosities will never be purchased again. I think they had caraway in them- the big, strange looking seeds that are sometimes in meatballs.

     

    When I was a kid, my family would buy some kind of meatball pizza (I think it was Red Baron) that had these awful seeds in them, and I would crunch down on them and be disappointed with their bitter taste. I do not wish bitter seeds on anyone.

     

    Gigi made roasted vegetables today and over-salted them. I have an idea for the roasted vegetables plus shrimp, though I’m not totally sure how that would work out. I guess one could add the shrimp later on in the process, as they tend to cook quickly. I definitely seem to be all about some shrimp these days.

     

    One day soon, I’ll make some gumbo and be really happy with the results!

     

    ‘til then, keep reading, get you nosh on, and stay tuned for the further exciting adventures here at THE YUM YUM!

     

    Beaux

     

     

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  2. Featured Players, Our Town, and an After Party: My Friday Night

    August 13, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    The weekly Publix adventure didn’t happen this week and likely won’t happen next week, as Earle’s going to be out of town.

    My friend Kelly invited us to go see the play at Featured Players last night, and since I had intended to go see it anyway to show support for the theatre and my friends who were in the play, I accepted the invitation.

    I have only been to Featured Players a handful of times, and that was at the former location. The new location’s been around for a few years (yikes) and I hadn’t been until last night. (Double yikes.)

    But as predicted, Featured Players had a great vibe to it. The play started out somewhat slow, and I kept questioning myself about what was going on with it, until Act 3, and the BAM! The audience got sucker punched with philosophy illustrated through art, and I was just shocked at the brilliance of it all. Truly, last night was a phenomenon.

    After the play, we returned to Kelly’s house, where Kelly had busily prepared food for us to eat. She’s a rather giving person and a fantastic host, so we had shrimp, crab cakes, quiche, and the zatar spice mix, in addition to Beaux here’s heating up sweet tea and drinking it.

    Later, Kelly also revealed she had made this Asian cole slaw type dish; amazing, simply amazing, with the wonderful taste of sesame oil as the back-up dancer-flavor. I’ll have to obtain this recipe from her in the near future.

    The play, “Our Town,” takes place in the early 1900s; thus, my next experiment is to find a recipe from the early 1900s and actually cook that recipe. I wonder how different it would be from today’s recipes. I know French Toast was specifically mentioned in the play, so maybe I’ll find an old recipe for that.

    Support your local community, folks! That theatre is something special that you don’t see around these parts every day. Come on, Wiregrass Area, BRING IT!

    And today’s food holiday, which I’m bringing to you: National Filet Mignon Day! Actually, that probably sounds horrifying to Veggie Table in the same way that it sounds horrifying to me. Maybe the Veggie Table and I should get together and create a Vegetarian Holiday Calendar. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

    Most of the vegetarian food and even the straight-up vegan food that I’ve eaten tastes fantastic and not at all how one would expect; there’s a great deal of flavor and the tastes are satisfying. However, as with most rules, there seem to be exceptions, and one exception I had was Soy Yogurt. Soy Yogurt was awful in a way that I rarely call food awful. I mean awful. The consistency was lumpy, the aftertaste made me gag, and I’ll never eaten it again if I can help it.

    More interesting blogs coming in the VERY near future!

    Beaux

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  3. Sinfully Delicious: Shrimp and Noodles

    July 13, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    There’s an inside joke about why I call this recipe “sinfully delicious,” but I won’t expose myself here.

    What you need:

    • half a pack of your choice of noodles. I used a kind of short egg noodle.
    • a half pound of shrimp; frozen salad shrimp work well.
    • a medium-sized tomato
    • a quarter to a half of a medium-sized onion
    • a clove of garlic
    • 2 teaspoons of oregano
    • 2 teaspoons of basil
    • feta cheese or parmesan cheese
    • 3 teaspoons of pepper
    • salt and any other spices to taste

    What you do:

    1. Bring water to boil and prepare the noodles.
    2. While the noodles are boiling, heat 3 Tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil in a skillet.
    3. Slice the tomato, onion, and garlic and add them to the skillet; heat on low.
    4. Add the basil, oregano, and pepper.
    5. Add frozen shrimp to the skillet and increase heat.
    6. When noodles are done, drain and add to the veggie-shrimp mixture.
    7. Cook on medium to low-medium for five to ten minutes or until most of the juices have evaporated.
    8. Remove from heat.
    9. Add cheese, stir well, and serve immediately.

    This recipe is quite similar to on that my friend Kelly made recently. Also, today, I added a squirt of lemon for extra flavor and seemed to have a problem getting the food salty enough. I’m not quite sure what happened.

    In addition, always remember that you can flavor your noodles by boiling them in a seasoned water. You can add crab boil, for instance, to the pot to season them before adding them to the main recipe. This is in fact the only real time you can add flavor to your noodles. After they’re cooked, the show’s over.

    Carpe Diem!

    Beaux


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  4. Beaux’s Kickin’ Cole Slaw

    July 3, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    Let’s cut straight to the chase: what would a Southern meal be in the Summertime if we didn’t have cole slaw to use as a side? Cole slaw’s especially a big thing when it comes to seafood plates. Most of the restaurants around here toss in fried fish, french fries, hush puppies, cole slaw, and if you’re lucky, cheese grits, too. How cheese grits came to be associated with seafood, I’ll never know, but if you think about it, someone somewhere had to be brave enough to try various foods and add various combinations of food together to grant us the recipes we have today. I bravely do this at times, too, as many of you have noted.

    Cole slaw is one of those mysterious foods that one sees next to other foods, that appears at cook-outs, that is served in restaurants with your main meal even though you didn’t ask for it or order it- you know what I mean, the kind of food that many children hate, and the kind of food that, as an adult, we stare at and wonder how it ever came to be.

    Many foods that we eat are like that for whatever reason. I would be unable to tell you what is in cole slaw had I not actually looked up recipes and asked Gigi how she makes hers. The basic recipe can be modified into whatever variation that you want. Cole slaw can be salty, sweet, savory, or some combination.

    Here’s my latest recipe:

    • 2 cups of chopped cabbage
    • 1/2 cup of chopped onion
    • 1/3 cup shredded carrots
    • 2 Tablespoons of mayonnaise
    • a packet of shrimp flavoring from ramen
    • red pepper flakes to taste

    What you do:

    • Combine the cabbage, onion, and carrots in a bowl.
    • In a separate bowl, stir together the mayonnaise and shrimp flavoring.
    • Add the flavored mayonnaise to the veggies.
    • Add red pepper flakes to give it a spicy kick.

    Honestly, the whole process isn’t difficult, so what are you waiting for? Go make some cole slaw!

    Beaux


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  5. Seafood Surprise!

    April 22, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    In our pantry, we’ve had an 8 ounce can of white crab sitting for over a year. Luckily, this kind of food does not spoil easily and was good to keep until next year.

    Lately, my burst of blogging had ceased- I’ve been sick on and off for the past two or three weeks, so now I have to try to get back into the groove of writing and catching up on writing blogs. Being ahead of the game is half the fun.

    Tonight, I did my magic again, going to kitchen, facing that can of white crab, and making something delicious out of it.

    Gigi’s cole slaw, which sat happily on the kitchen island, prompted this recipe.

    What you need:

    • 3 cups of cole slaw
    • 8 ounces of crab meat or imitation crab meat
    • 3 or 4 cups of salad shrimp
    • 1 large onion
    • 3 Tablespoons of Old Bay seafood seasoning
    • 3 Tablespoons of lemon juice
    • 1/2 cup English peas (optional)
    • Parmesan cheese to garnish
    • croutons -or- crushed cheese crackers
    • bacon bits -or- actual bacon to garnish

    Here’s what you do:

    • First, prepare the cole slaw and set it in the fridge to chill. I’ll post another blog specifying the rather easy process of cole slaw.
    • Chop the onion finely without outright mincing it.
    • Heat oil or butter in a large skillet.
    • When the skillet gets hot, add the onions and allow them to cook for a few minutes over medium heat.
    • Add the crab meat and the shrimp. Allow to cook for a minute to a minute and a half.
    • Add the Old Bay seasoning. Allow to cook for a few more minutes.
    • Add the lemon juice and English peas.
    • The onions should be tender, and the whole mixture should have reduced significantly at this point.
    • Remove from heat.
    • Spoon cole slaw into bowls, then add the seafood mixture. On top of that, sprinkle Parmesan cheese.
    • On top of this, add crushed cheese crackers. Serve and enjoy.

    I definitely recommend using the chunky pieces of imitation crab instead of using canned crab meat, because the texture is better and generally the meat is more flavorful.

    This recipe would also be good if made with a cream sauce and served over pasta.

    Carpe diem and happy eating!

    Beaux


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  6. The Divine Mystery of the Culinary Arts, or That Somethin’ Special ’bout Cookin’

    March 21, 2011 by The Yum Yum

    The Onyx Plate can likely agree with me on the small hints of intuition one gets while cooking. Sometimes, one is nudged to add a little of this, a little of that, or to simply leave out some aspect of the recipe. This sounds as though it could lead to critical mistakes, but that only happens when one leaves, say, lobster out of a recipe that is lobster-based, and even then some well-meaning vegans are capable of creating a substitute that works equally as well. That, however, is an example of the wisdom of planning and not spur-of-the-moment strokes of culinary genius.

    Also, these miniature risks are well within reason, so it’s not a matter of just going crazy with the recipe. Still, the slight risk one takes while venturing into the unknown can be a great rush. Small steps into the unknown with minimal risk of failure are more appealing to me than huge leaps and bounds into something I can’t begin to comprehend. If you’re curious about what I mean, search for my blog on falafel to see that disaster.

    Tonight, I made my second recipe out of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. Also, because it’s a mouthful to say each time as I type my blogs, I’m going to begin abbreviating the title to VCE, so heads up.

    The recipe in question was a butter sauce with sage, which went perfectly with the frozen Mrs. T’s pierogies that I boiled. I doubled the recipe and added tiny salad shrimp to it, and after the pierogies were boiled and drained, the shrimp-sage and butter sauce was poured over them.

    I overestimated the number of pierogies I had left- only half a box, so the doubling of the sauce proved to be a skosh too much. However, for a full box of Mrs. T’s pierogies (12 count), the doubled recipe would be ideal.

    The doubling of the recipe and adding of the salad shrimp dawned on me at the last moment, after the original sauce had been made.

    What astounded me in the end was the actual perfection of the recipe. Nothing I’ve ever made hit my mouth and made me think it was absolutely perfect, but the truth is, this recipe was perfect, or at least close to perfect.

    So what of the Divine Mystery? Before I even went to the kitchen, I said a short prayer, offering my cooking to God. While cooking, I repeated the dhikr as long as I could remember to do it. Thus, I reason that maybe God did intervene and guide me the whole time.

    The Mystery is that I would’ve never thought to have put sage and parsley in butter, and this attests to the limitation of our ability to cook stems form our own human lack of creativity. Someone, somewhere, realized that sage would go well with butter.

    This takes us to the next level of the Divine Mystery of cooking: food doesn’t always tell its secret immediately. Often we must coax it out, test it, discover it, mix it with something else in order for it to reveal its truth. In many ways, life is like that- life has special ingredients, timers, and methods to achieve particular results.

    Sage is a perfect example. First, the word itself is beautiful, melodic even, and not only refers to the herb but also to wisdom. Second, by itself, the scent is almost overpowering and not charming. But when added to butter (or to other food in many cases), something changes, something is released in it, and the once overpowering scent infuses itself into a greater substance, playing its part, singing its note, and then and only then is its true essence revealed to us.

    Again, we see this in life. People who seem to have no purpose and no place in life need only to be put where they’re really meant to be put, and then they will shine- something will change, and their true essence will play the part its meant to be play. Odd how I’m aware of this but am also aware that my full essence isn’t blooming and infusing earth as it should.

    Also, lately I’ve fallen in love with garnishing food with bread crumbs. I fought myself tonight over whether or not to add bread crumbs to my already perfect recipe, and eventually I exercised my willpower to resist. I did sop up the leftover butter sauce in my bowl with french bread, though, which I understood as a compromise.

    Carpe Diem!

    Beaux

     

     


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