Forbidden rice meant for the emperors
I was looking for another recipe to use my black rice and came across several black rice salads and got me thinking to try and put an Asian spin on it with some glazed salmon. It was delicious and we ate the leftovers of the salad for a couple of days.
Black rice or forbidden rice was once reserved for the emperors and used in Chinese medicine to ensure their health and long life. Everyone else was forbidden to eat it.
Grits aren’t made just for Shrimp!
I’ve made Shrimp and Grits for decades now and I have never attempted to try another recipe. My recipe came from an RSVP article in a 1990’s Bon Appetite magazine and is one from Crook’s Corner in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and is so good I’ve just never searched for any other variations.
I found this recipe for Fish and Grits from Southern Living and had to try it. With red fish and Carolina stone ground yellow/white mixed grits in the freezer I had everything I needed for dinner. I made my recipe for grits instead of the one in their recipe. My grits never disappoint so I’m not taking any chances.
If you have any late 70’s or early 80’s Southern Living cookbooks, you may see a few of my recipes. Back then (not sure if they still do this) a person could submit a recipe and if chosen they would print it in the cookbook, send you a copy of the annual book and also send 50 recipe cards with your recipe that said “my recipe printed in Southern Living”. I’m thinking maybe I’ll start going through some of my old cookbooks and revisiting some old favorites to see if I can do an updated version.
Friday night fights!
(There isn’t a recipe today but just a little story about how we love frog legs and our fried fish and another look at a few of our family favorites.)
On any given Friday night when we were kids (my twin sister and brother) we would probably be in front of a black and white tv watching The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports (Boxing). I guess that was my dad’s favorite sport to watch. (I learned a lot about Gillette razor blades every Friday night.) Many of those Friday nights would involve a fish fry with family friends or if my dad had gone frog gigging then he would have taken out his boat that he made to float ditches and gigged us some frogs. This boat was made from welding two car hoods together and was perfect for going down some of the bayous like Black Island or Wolf Island or any of the ditches full of rain water and overflowing with croaking bull frogs ready to give it up for a delicious dinner for our family.
Our dad could pretty much do anything. I’ve called him a Renaissance Man in one of my post about his hushpuppy recipe (which is the best hushpuppy you will ever put in your mouth.) Even though a lot of our meals were things like fried pork chops, fish, meatloaf, duck and other game, delicious stews and soups; just simple good food, there was a lot of love and care that went into preparing all those meals. Our mother was a stay-at-home mom and had lunch ready for my dad every day and then a nice meal ready every night about the time he came home.
Not a shortage of veggies in this dish!
Love shrimp, love pasta? Love veggies? You’ll love this dish.
I’m trying to work my way through bags of pasta I bought over the last several months. When I get out of town to larger grocery stores and see so many beautiful pasta shapes, I can’t resist buying a bunch. Well I have enough to feed an army in my tiny pantry.
I can’t wait to have a whole pasta section in my new pantry. NEWS: Our slab is being poured this Thursday so once I see those walls go up, I’ll be measuring off my 10×7′ pantry to see what all I can get in there. Presently in our 800 sq. ft house we have been renting for almost three years I have what use to be a broom closet that GA did a great job making shelving in almost every square inch minus room for a broom. So to have a big pantry plus a butler’s pantry and wet bar with storage I will not know what to do with all that space. I will do my best to fill it all up.
All Shrimp or scallops or both and with or without pasta.
This recipe can be made as a first course appetizer or you could add some pasta for a main course.
The scallop shells I used to hold this recipe came from a friend who was cleaning out things she never used and I volunteered to take them off her hands. I will have a perfect place to put them when I get my very large pantry (top on my list for things I wanted in our new home); but for now they are in a under the bed box until I’m ready to use them again.
There are all kinds of cute little dishes hiding under my two beds right now (until we get out of this 800 sq ft house) that I want to use for dinner guest; especially my cute little glass espresso cups that will hold some kind of yummy decadent dessert and my tiny stemmed glasses that would be a great vessel for my date nut shake or mini chocolate martinis.
My first thought for these shells was to use them for a first course appetizer with one very large scallop with some kind of sauce poured over it. There are several other sauces I want to try once I can get larger scallops. Since I couldn’t find the extra large scallops, I had to settle for sea scallops so then decided to add shrimp to the recipe.
And…Red Pepper Sauce!
So, what does one do with a large package of smoked salmon that wasn’t eaten because of COVID. This was going to be on one of my appetizer trays for Christmas when all the kids were here but Covid happened and the week cut short and this package of salmon found itself thrown into the freezer.
We had plans to go to the movie the day I made this recipe and I knew we would eat ourselves sick on popcorn and by the time we got back I wouldn’t want to cook and a day’s diet of nothing but popcorn wouldn’t be that healthy. So, I got busy that morning and made my salmon cakes, my red pepper sauce and even made a Mardi Gras colored slaw for a side dish (since Mardi Gras was coming up). The slaw was beautiful, the cakes laid in the refrigerator just waiting to be cooked that night. Even if it was a late dinner, we had a “proper” meal.
Redfish with lots of butter!
I guess by now you know if you don’t want to read a bunch of text you can simply scroll through this “no ads” food blog and find the recipe. I, too, get tired of scrolling forever trying to find a recipe and seeing an ad every other paragraph. I have no ads for two reasons, first, I could never figure out how to get them on the blog and secondly I do this purely as a hobby. When, I’m not baking at Lollitop Sweet Shop with son, Paul I may actually find time to fire up some new dishes at home.
This recipe I found while searching for New Orleans fish recipes (nola.com). I love looking at different city’s newspapers that I can find on line for their regional cuisine recipes. I usually pick cities like Louisville (lived there), San Francisco (been there), NYC (been there too) and southern cities like Savannah, Charleston, New Orleans. It’s also fun to come across really good restaurants and I will pick through their menu to find something I might want to recreate. I still have an idea for a dish we had in Aux Baux France in 2012 at Le Varietes (and it is still on the menu; must be a favorite) for Poulet Sauce Tapenade Verte. It was a beautiful chicken dish with stacks of green and black tapenade and served with a tower of red rice (which I have).
Another one of those recipes I told you about from vacation.
The most special thing about this recipe, I thought, was the truffled bean puree on the plate. Below is my plate from Sky at Beaches in Turks and Caicos.
The above bean puree is a little thinner than what I used on my plate and the salmon at Sky didn’t have the crunchy coating AND I didn’t have the broccoli and cauliflower. But like I said the truffle bean puree was what got my attention.
I use to keep truffle oil but I never really used it that much except on shoestring french fries (and those are fantastic). I feel like after a year it was old and threw it away and while on a trip somewhere I had purchased a small jar of truffle salt. This worked perfect in the bean puree; just enough truffle flavor without overpowering the dish.
My bean puree should have been a little thinner but since I really liked the flavor I wanted more on my plate. I think it would be much easier to smear on the plate had it been thinner.
Good and bad from Poppycocks…
So, the bad I will get out of the way first. We had dinner one night at Poppycocks in Traverse City, MI and my husband had the worst meal ever. It was cold, the plating didn’t make sense, vegetables looked raw and even after sending it back it still wasn’t good or even hot. In almost 50 years of marriage I don’t think he has sent anything back. The fish had no color and looked steamed and who puts a big chunk of cold tomato under a cooked piece of fish.
Now to the good. I really felt quilty eating my delicious Key Lime Shrimp and Pasta dish. It was so good and the lime flavor was so refreshing. I offered him a bite (only one) which he refused because he was waiting on his plate to be reheated. I think maybe they took the plate back and just looked at it and brought it back. So much for the SPECIAL of the evening.
What I remember about this dish the first time I tasted it; well it was love at first bite. My son, Paul, made it one weekend when they were visiting The Woodlands. Anything he cooks is always delicious. But this particular dish brought sadness too.
The sadness from eating this dish came when there was one bite left on my plate and I knew that was going to be the last. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way about anything I’ve eaten before but the redfish along with the corn maque choux and topped with lump crab meat was just so good and it’s always such a memorable experience watching/helping/being a sous chef to him.
Weekend with the Michies..
Oysters have never been high on my list for seafood and “raw” seafood for sure. But, this past weekend our son Paul with Brooke, Milo, Donovan and little Ellie (dog) came to visit Gran and Papa G for the weekend and their friends the Hatleys came also with their daughters.
So, what was the plan for food? Well the guys went to the seafood market and came back with blue crab, shrimp, corn, potatoes, mushrooms (all for crab/shrimp boil) and Paul had some fresh oysters. Since I was out of horseradish (I had a tiny bit) Paul suggested a mignonette sauce and I had all the ingredients for making up some pretty quickly.
Thai food anyone?
A lot of recipes I do come from things I’ve eaten at restaurants and have tried to recreate, some recipe are things I have cooked over years of being married and some are recipes I try of other peoples. Usually I’m tweaking with things I want to change in the recipe.
In the case of this recipe I only made one change or maybe two. I added sugar snap peas which I tninkadd a needed crunch factor to the recipe and also some color to lighten the dish up. I did also add some soy (or Tamari) sauce with the fish sauce only because I hate the smell of fish sauce but know it adds a lot of flavor to Asian recipes. My only other recommendation would be to only use one Fresno pepper. Even though we like things really hot around here, two peppers make for a pretty steaming hot dish. If you can’t find Fresno peppers substitute a jalapeño.
There are all types of noodles you can serve along with this dish. I made my husband Udon noodles but you can use rice noodles, ramen, or soba noodles. I made my dish with black rice so if you are wanting rice try the black (not wild or brown rice or some good old white rice even though it’s not as good for you as the black or brown rices.