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Fish/Seafood

Entree/ Fish/Seafood

Thai Shrimp and Eggplant Stir-Fry

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.

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Entree/ Fish/Seafood/ Sandwiches

Shrimp Salad on Puffed Pastry Bread

Don’t you love, crisp, thin, crunchy things?

Ya know how you get an idea stuck in your head and can’t stop thinking about it? Well, I do that all the time. Five or six years ago I was watching one of Giada’s cooking show and she made this turkey sandwich with crisp pieces of puffed pastry. The puffed pastry wasn’t baked the normal way where it gets about two inches high (I am not a fan) but was sandwiched between two baking sheets lined with parchment paper and baked until crisp and brown.

I started thinking about doing this sandwich for a “back to school” post but then what kid is going to take a puff pastry sandwich to school. Maybe same kid that would have a pig roast for his first birthday (grandson Donovan). He might not like puff pastry either but I’m sure you will like this “bread” with either a spread or just put some freshly sliced lunchmeat with some avocado and mayo and have the crunchiest flakiest sandwich ever.

When my kids were in school seems like all they wanted for lunch was either pbj or turkey on white bread of course, plain, no mayo or mustard. When I was growing up my favorite sandwich was probably a thick slice of bologna on white bread with mustard or an egg sandwich made like a toad in a hole but with two slices of bread.

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Entree/ Fish/Seafood

Vegetable Noodles with Cedar Plank Salmon

Do you want something cool for dinner on a hot summer night?

I cook all the time it seems like whether it is summer, fall, winter or spring. Soups are not as appealing in the summer months as the other three seasons and I don’t like eating a lot of cold foods in the cooler months when all you want is some good comfort food. But, when it is 100° outside with the “feels like” temperature even higher than that I do occasionally go for something easier and cold for dinner.

The day I bought this salmon, it wasn’t even on my grocery list. But, when I happened by the seafood section and saw this beautifully arranged salmon fillets, I had to buy some. We are lucky here in our part of Texas to have a great assortment of seafood year round. This salmon was a beautiful orange and was a wild caught fish which makes it even better.

The recipe I came across for the marinade for this dish used soba noodles. I decided to make it “pasta” free and make my noodles from zucchini, cucumber, carrot and onion. Remember, I don’t want to call this zucchini pasta because it isn’t fooling anyone saying that. I wouldn’t want my tastebuds set for some good pasta and get a mouth full of vegetables but, if you know in advance that this is a very healthy dish, you will not mind at all that it’s carb free.

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Appetizers/ Entree/ Fish/Seafood

Crab Cakes with Red Pepper Yogurt Sauce

Great use of leftover crab meat.

My son and his family were here recently and he made a wonderful Grilled Redfish on Half shell with Crab Macque Choux (corn) and a Carrot Habanero Burre Blanc Sauce. It was delicious and even though I could not begin to top his dish (see below) I did have 1/2 pound of crabmeat leftover from his Macque Choux .

So, one night we had some friends over and I decided to make a tuna tartare appetizer (recipe coming soon) we had tried at the Harvest Grill in Meridian, Mississippi when on our way to a family wedding in Alabama. And I wanted to come up with a crab dish to use that left over crab. I debated over either a crab spread (hot or cold) or crab salad but when I found this crab cake recipe I decided to try it because it used some avocado on the plate as a resting place for the crab cake and a red pepper sauce smeared on the plate. Visually, it just jumped off the page and I think I actually had all the ingredients to make it.

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Entree/ Fish/Seafood

Shrimp Taco Wraps

You don’t need any tortillas for this taco.

I’m always looking for something new to try on friends. Wednesday night is my “girl’s night out” night. Sometimes we do “movie night” (my favorite), sometimes we go out to eat at a local restaurant or occasionally we do dinner and one of our houses.

I love fish tacos and I know I’ve been doing a lot of shrimp recipes lately but I couldn’t resist trying out a recipe for shrimp tacos using lettuce leaves in place of the tortillas; so is it a taco or lettuce wrap or a little bit of both? Doesn’t that mean you can eat twice as much since that lettuce has almost zero calories. I like doing anything with shrimp because as long as there is a bag in your freezer you can come up with something yummy on a moments notice. I have 15 shrimp recipes in my “entree” section here and 14 recipes for appetizers (hot and cold). So, that goes to show you, there’s a lot you can do with that curved little crustacean.

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Appetizers/ Entree/ Fish/Seafood/ HotApp

Sugar Cane Skewered Shrimp with Bacon and Pineapple

I finally found some sugar cane and wanted to use it.

I’ve always wanted to make something on a sugar cane skewer and now I have. And now that I have I may just save it for drink skewers. This recipe would have been much faster using ordinary wooden skewers. That said, don’t worry about looking for sugar cane, just get out those long pics.

Many years ago before using the internet, I use to look up newspaper food pages (usually on a Wednesday or Thursday) to see what foods were popular (I guess now we would say “trending”) in that area. The Courier-Journal in Louisville’s food pages can still be accessed. If you have time, try typing in some of your favorite city’s newspapers. The Citizen-Times in Asheville offers a 30 day free look. The Post and Courier from Charleston has free access to their recipes. If you want to see what’s happening on the other side of the US (from me anyway) Napa Valley Register offers free access too.

I just read an article about what was the favorite foods from each state. Results were crazy. In almost all states, by far, the winning type of food was pizza. Of course, Texas had Mexican food winning out as did Colorado and California. Hawaii’s favorite food was bakery items.

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Entree/ Fish/Seafood

Paella

My pan overfloweth!

If you are tired of doing BBQ for the 4th of July, why not try a big pan of paella.

My first experience with paella was many years ago in Mexico. After checking into our all-inclusive resort we had a cocktail in hand before even making it to our room. We settled in for a few days of sun, beach and beautiful water. This resort was where I first tasted a white vegetable soup that took me years of searching to come with something similar to what I ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner while in Mexico

One day while we were on the beach, the chef prepared a paella. It wasn’t any ordinary pan of paella either. The fire for cooking this was a big oil drum with flames blazing from the top. The pan was maybe 5′ across and that they perched on top of the flaming barrel. They proceeded to cook the ingredients, and at the end adding in the green peas. As we sat in our chairs on the beach enjoying cocktails that were delivered before we even asked for them, we were salivating at the aroma coming from this gigantic pan and as they slowly picked up the pan to move it to the table to start serving all of us beach goers, THEY DROPPED IT and spilled paella all over the sand. So, we had to wait a little while to taste it since they had to start over from scratch. When we were finally served the dish of paella, it was delicious.

Years later we had some paella in Spain which was just ok (picture below); I thought it was too mushy. Then my son make it here one year for our Spainish feast we did after Thanksgiving and I was just his sous chef. So, I thought it was about time for me to try it on my own.

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Entree/ Fish/Seafood

Spicy Sesame Tuna Bowl

Not everything served in a bowl is soup.

A bowl serves a good purpose when you’re serving a food that you don’t want to chase all over the plate. I love pasta in a bowl because the rim of the bowl gives you a way to pin down your squirmy pasta pieces. Breakfast in a bowl makes sense too because you have layers of your favorite breakfast items all stacked up.

Now, I guess everything mingled in a bowl isn’t for everyone. I remember one of my kid’s friends not liking anything touching on a plate and all the food had to have its own space. I’m guilty of putting beans or peas in a small bowl on my plate because I don’t want all the juice running around the other foods and getting them soggy.

One Friday night we went to Bonefish Grill and as always I checked out their menu before going and I knew exactly what I was going to order because it looked so pretty in the picture I knew I would be making it because my mouth was watering just looking at the picture.

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Entree/ Fish/Seafood/ Pasta

Shrimp and Crab Stuffed Pasta Shells

Stuffed shells perfect for summer get together.

Do you cook more shrimp in the summer or are you like me and cook it year round when you get them on sale. This dish would be great with some lobster thrown in to the mix.

I love shrimp in just about any recipe. I’ve pickled them, corn dogged them, skewered them, coconut fried them, Bang Banged them, and like Bubba Gump I could go on and on listing the ways I like shrimp.

This recipe just happens to have crab meat in it along with the shrimp. After making this dish I decided that maybe the next time around instead of stuffing the shells this would be great just mixed in with a penne or rigatoni pasta; saves some time stuffing and the taste is going to be just the same.

Sour cream was supposed to go in this dish but my carton container something other than that when I opened it and I was in luck since grandson Thomas had just been for a visit and left behind a carton of plain yogurt. I like the yogurt and would probably use that the next time instead of the sour cream.

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Entree/ Fish/Seafood

Fiesta Catfish with Guacamole

I had to convince my husband to try this combination.

Sometime back in May with Cinco de Mayo behind us I was thinking about Mexican flavors and how they would fit into a catfish recipe.

Growing up the only way we ate catfish was fried. In my opinion, that is the best way to eat catfish. Although, lately I have been coating it and baking it in the oven and I have to say it is almost as good as deep-fried. Still crunchy like fried but not nearly as many calories since it isn’t swimming in oil.

My first thoughts were to put in some Mexican seasonings like cumin and chili powder then I got carried away and added some garlic powder, cayenne and paprika. Very tasty. There were also a few avocados lying around just waiting to be made into some good guacamole so after it’s made and the fish is done I added some to the tops of the crunchy, out of the oven catfish filets along with a sliver of tomato.

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Entree/ Fish/Seafood

Red Snapper with Citrus Gremolata

One fish that didn’t get away.

I’ve always loved fishing but not too much into baiting that hook. I remember as a kid my dad taking us fishing and we would always have him to bait the hook. Now, I don’t mind putting a minnow on the hook; after all, that is just a baby fish. But, I never wanted to put a squirmy worm or a hopping cricket on the hook. I remember my dad sometimes trying bread balls or even a piece of bologna to try to catch some kind of fish, and he usually caught something.

A couple of Februarys in the last several years I have gone fishing with my husband and one of his friends at River Ridge Fish Camp in Texas. The fish we are looking for were white bass (not my favorite) BUT we would catch our 25 limit each in less than two hours. Now, that was fun fishing. I wasn’t along on the Alaska fishing trip my husband went on but did get to eat the 75 lbs. of silver salmon, king salmon and halibut he brought home.

Several weekends ago we decided to take a road trip down to Port Aransas and on every menu there was some kind of red snapper listed and when we returned home I hopped on over to the store and bought some; $22/lb., ouch, (this week it was $16/lb.). While at Port A I had a Mahi Mahi with a butter sauce and it got me to thinking about making a gremolata and using it on red snapper.

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Entree/ Fish/Seafood/ Pasta

Red Chard, Shrimp and Artichoke Stir-fry

Beautiful and so easy and something red for Valentine’s Day.

These days when I’m trying to make things move a little slower I’m doing a stir-fry. Now does that make sense. A slow day but with a quick fast dish at the end of the day.

I’ve always got some shrimp in my freezer. In fact, when the x-large goes on sale here, I will buy 2-3 bags and put in my freezer for last-minute dishes like this or a quick shrimp cocktail. So, I can have a slow and relaxing day doing whatever I want and wait until the last-minute and do a quick dinner to feed the hungry.

I’ve been busy trying to catch up on all these new movies that I’ve missed out for the last few weeks, getting back into craft circle and trying to come up with a couple of projects I would like to make for the year, and still working on getting the outdoor kitchen finished up. I bought a cool copper vessel type sink to use but still have not had the granite cut or picked out a faucet to match the sink. Gotta get this done because before you know it we are going to want to be outside again.

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