Paisano: Jerked Shrimp

Being a Jerk



I spent two years in Eugene, Oregon — within 100 miles of the Pacific coast — and there was only one place in town where I could buy genuinely fresh fish, everywhere else it was frozen or previously frozen. But at least there was a place. I also spent three years in Nashua, New Hampshire, which was also within 100 miles of the coast. I never found fresh fish in Nashua. Then I spent two years in Sacramento, California. Yup, 100 miles from the coast and, yup, no fresh fish that I could find.

But here in Knoxville, Tennessee — almost 1000 miles from the nearest coast — I can buy fresh fish. Although the fish market does sell some frozen fish, mostly the seafood is fresh and straight from the Gulf of Mexico. They send a truck down to Mobile, Alabama twice a week to buy straight off the boats and haul it back up here. They opened a new store near me recently and, because I was teaching a class on cooking fish, I stopped in to see what they had.

Here in Knoxville, Tennessee — almost 1000 miles from the nearest coast — I can buy fresh fish.

I planned on concentrating on techniques so the menu I posted began with broiled tilapia with arugula pesto, then salmon in parchment, followed by poached snapper with a lemon cream sauce, and lastly grilled tuna with Romesco. But the store also had some gorgeous jumbo shrimp — so I bought a couple of pounds.

The menu posted for the class said nothing about shrimp, but in keeping with the philosophy of, "give them more than they expect" I always like to toss in an appetizer that I can feed the class almost immediately. In this case I decided to give them jerked shrimp as a starter. And while I was planning on jerking some shrimp I decided to make a jerk of, I mean for, myself.

Jerked Shrimp
Serves 4 as a main course.

1 1/2 lb jumbo shrimp — shelled
1 lg lime — juiced (2 - 3 tbsp)
2 tbsp unsalted butter
2 tsp Herbes de Provence
Seasoning:
3 tbsp hot paprika
3 tbsp garlic powder
3 tsp ground allspice
1 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
3/4 tsp cayenne pepper (more or less, depending on preferred spice level)
1 tbsp kosher salt
3/4 tsp freshly ground pepper

Thoroughly mix all seasoning ingredients. You'll have more than you need, but it keeps well.

Place shrimp in a large zippered plastic bag. Add lime juice and 1 1/2 tablespoons of seasoning. Toss to mix and refrigerate for at least 1 hour and not more than 2.

Heat a skillet over medium high heat. Add butter and swirl to melt. Dump shrimp and juice into skillet and add Herbes de Provence. Cook about 1 1/2 minutes per side. Serve immediately.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | seriously good | paisano | shrimp | seafood | main dish

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Paisano: Yogurt/Sumac Chicken

Strange Spice



I've no doubt given the impression that when I get together with the Paisano all we do is cook, but that's not true, sometimes we let other people cook.

I was attending a conference in San Francisco back in 1993 and gave Paisano a call in case he was going to be in the area. He was and invited me to a party. Microsoft happened to be having a party that same night for conference attendees, but I'd been to those parties before - free beer, wine, unbelievably bad pizza, and drunken geeks. It was an easy choice to make. The party was in Berkley but that and directions were all the old man would tell me.

One particular chicken dish caught my attention with a flavor I simply couldn't place

I'd rented a car because I was planning a side trip down to Monterrey over the weekend so around 7:00 I headed over the bridge to Berkley and after a couple of wrong turns I found the place.

Aside from a couple of other Euro-types like Paisano and myself, the rest of the guests (and the hosts) were middle-eastern. My friend knew I'd lived in Egypt for a year and thought I'd fit right in and, in fact, I did. There were people there from Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, and I don’t know where else. They were all either students, grad students, or professors at UCB and the party was one in series that had been taking place every month or two for six years.

The food was awesome, but one particular chicken dish caught my attention with a flavor I simply couldn't place. So I started asking around and eventually found a young woman named FohzAn. It turned out the flavor was sumac, a deep red powder made from the sumac tree's berries. It's lemony in flavor, but instead of sour it seems slightly musty to me, which is what threw me. I also learned the chicken had been marinated in a mixture of yogurt, garlic, and sumac. I didn't get a recipe, though, and the dish eventually slipped my mind. Then I received a review copy of Zov: Recipes and Memories from the Heart by Zov Karamardian and flipping through it I found a recipe that took me back to that evening in Berkley. Zov's version is based on an Indian recipe, but it's close to what I remember, and note, I've tweaked the recipe a bit.

Sumac-Coated Chicken Kebab
Serves 4.
(Adpated from Zov: Recipes and Memories from the Heart)
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts cut into 1"x1" pieces
1/2 cup yogurt
1/4 cup finely-chopped mint
2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
2 Tbsp. paprika
2 Tbsp. sumac
3 cloves crushed garlic
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp. nutmeg

Thoroughly combine all ingredients in a zippered storage bag and marinate in the refrigerator for 24 hours, turning and remixing 4 to 6 times while marinating.

Build a medium hot fire in your grill. Divide chicken pieces among 4 skewers. (Note: I can no longer use a grill, so I used my grill pan over medium-high heat.)

Grill kebabs for about 3 minutes per side over a fire or 5 minutes per side on a grill pan for a total of 12 or 20 minutes respectively. Serve garnished with mint chiffonade and lemon wedges. I served them on couscous with a salad on the side.

I'll be posting a review of Zov's book in the near future (after I've had time to check out a few more recipes), but I can tell you now that she has a passion for food and cooking that equals my own -- and her book is gorgeous.

Paisano is a fictional character created for my column on Gather.com and the events related here are a mixture of truth and fiction, The food, however, is real.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | seriously good | seafood | shrimp | jerk

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Barbequed Shrimp

Misnomer



If there ever was a bad idea it would be barbequing shrimp. Shrimp are a delicate meat that will overcook in 15 seconds. Barbeque, on the other hand, is the application of smoke and low heat for a long time. The closest you could get to actually barbequing shrimp is blowing cigar smoke at them for an hour or two — which probably wouldn't taste particularly good and would be boring. Nevertheless, Cajun barbequed shrimp are delicious: they just aren't really barbequed.

They're also Mediterranean.

When I tell folks I'm a chef the standard question is, "What's your favorite food?" To which my answer is, "Which is your favorite child?" I love food in general, but what they're really asking is what do I cook at home. To that my answer is Mediterranean cuisine, which elicits the next query among folks who know food, "What do you call Mediterranean?"

I then wax rhapsodic about rosemary and thyme, pasta and fish, olive oil and lemon. I talk about how the common ingredients are treated differently on the northern (European) and southern (African) coasts. And if the questioner is perspicacious I end up in New Orleans and the Caribbean.

If you think about it these cuisines bear a great resemblance to (and were strongly influenced by) southern European and African cuisines. Although Caribbean and Cajun/Creole food tends to include the most distinctive New World ingredient, capsicum peppers, the other ingredients and the cooking techniques definitely show the Old World roots.

So barbequed shrimp, which are sautéed in butter with onions, peppers, and seasoned with thyme, garlic, and assorted ground peppers are, to my mind, essentially Mediterranean in character. And they're certainly not barbequed.

I shelled and seasoned some shrimp with Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning and some dried thyme and let them sit for about an hour. Next I sautéed the shrimp until not-quite done in a lot of butter and spooned them out onto a plate, leaving the butter behind.

Diced onions and green bell peppers went into the pan until translucent, then a clove of minced garlic. I finished the dish by adding a bit of white wine and some clam juice which I reduced a bit before stirring in a tad of arrowroot for thickening and then returning the shrimp to finish cooking along with a healthy dash of Tobasco sauce..

I served the shrimp on a bed of Basmati rice spiked with more of the Chachere seasoning, Very good — and spicy.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | seriously good | barbequed shrimp | shrimp | seafood | cajun-creole

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Shrimp Curry

Mellow Yellow



I don't know why I don't cook with curry powder more often. I'm love the flavor and it's a surprisingly flexible seasoning that can even work in desserts. Perhaps it's because the odor can linger for a day or two and smells far better in the evening when you're hungry than in the morning when you've just gotten up. Or perhaps it's because anytime you use it it's an in-your-face flavor. But for whatever reason it's not a regular component of my cooking.

Last weekend I had lunch with my parents and my mother made a quick shrimp and crab curry that I really liked. In fact, it was so quick and easy I had to make it myself a few days later just to fix the idea in my mind.

You could serve this with the usual rice, but my mother served it in puff pastry shells and they contributed a lot to the flavor and added a touch of elegance to the meal.

Shrimp Curry
Serves 4.

1/2 lb cooked salad shrimp
1/2 c canned crab
1/2 ea md. onion, minced
2 c coconut milk
4 ea scallions, cut into short lengths
3 tbsp flour
3 tbsp butter
1/2 ea lemon, juiced
salt to taste
Madras curry powder to taste

Cook four puff pastry shells according to package.

Melt butter in a sauce pan over medium low heat, add onion and cook until translucent. Add flour and about a tablespoon of curry powder and cook, stirring constantly, for about three minutes. Add coconut milk and continue cooking, stirring constantly, until sauce thickens. Add lemon juice, shrimp, crab, some of the crab juice, about half the scallions, and salt. Taste and adjust seasonings. Spoon into pastry shells and garnish with remaining scallions.

There's no need to use lump crab, it's best if the crab is evenly distributed throughout more as a flavoring than an ingredient.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin weeks | seriously good | shrimp | currry | shrimp+curry | seafood

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Shrimp & Grits

Low-country Luscious



The group I refer to as my "cooking buddies" has been getting together every other year since 1994 for a Cooks' Bash. The first was held in Charleston, South Carolina where I had my first sushi and, to everyone's great amusement, wasabi. I still haven't lived down The Wasabi Event.

In addition to sushi, I had the pleasure of introducing a friend from the Pacific Northwest to a Southern breakfast of eggs, grits, country ham, and biscuits. One night we had a Low Country clambake which mostly involved oysters and Frogmort Stew. The traditional cuisine is similar to Creole cooking, heavy on fish, rice, potent spices, and the Trinity of onion, celery, and bell pepper.

I had the pleasure of introducing a friend from the Pacific Northwest to a Southern breakfast of eggs, grits, country ham, and biscuits.

Shrimp plays a particularly big roll, with Charleston Receipts offering dishes such as Breakfast Shrimp, half a dozen shrimp pies, and Shrimp Stuffed in Bell Peppers. Oddly enough, the shrimp dish I think of as most typically Low Country doesn't appear: Shrimp and Grits. This causes me to wonder if, despite the dish's fame, it's a relatively recent invention.

There's a restaurant here in Knoxville, Chesapeake's, that sometimes offers a particularly good version as a special. I've been meaning to make it myself for quite awhile, but it wasn't until last week, when the local paper posted a recipe that looked good, that I finally got around to doing so. The published recipe is by Louis Osteen and he serves it at Louis's at Pawleys on Pawleys Island. I tweaked the recipe to meet my needs, but also because the amount of liquid called for seemed excessive and would have more resembled a thick shrimp soup than shrimp smothered in a sauce.

I also, completely ignored the recipe for grits because it called for quick grits, but again required too much liquid. I suspect these are typos in the recipe. Instead, I did use quick grits, but I followed the package directions to make 2 cups and added about 3 tablespoons of butter.

Shrimp for Shrimp & Grits
Adapted from the Knoxville News Sentinel.
Serves 4.

1 lb medium shrimp — peeled
3 tbsp butter
4 slices smoked bacon
2/3 c chopped onions
1/4 c chopped celery
1/4 c chopped green bell pepper
2 tsp minced garlic
1/4 tsp dried thyme or 1 sprig fresh
1 bay leaf
1/3 c white wine or vermouth
3 tbsp flour
2 c clam juice (shrimp stock is better if you have it)
2 tbsp tomato paste
1/2 c heavy cream
hot sauce to taste
salt and pepper to taste

Make the grits.

In a non stick skillet, melt the butter over medium-high heat and cook shrimp for about 2 minutes per side. Set aside, the shrimp should be slightly under-cooked.

In a large sauté pan cook the bacon until crisp over medium heat. Drain bacon but reserve grease in pan. Add onions, celery, and pepper and sau té until softened. Add garlic, thyme, and bay and cook 1 minute more. Increase heat to high, add white wine, and cook until evaporated. Reduce heat to medium and sprinkle with flour, mix thoroughly and cook, stirring frequently with a spatula for 3 minutes and scraping the bottom to prevent burning. Add clam juice and tomato paste and whisk vigorously to avoid lumps. Bring to a simmer and stir in cream. Add salt, pepper, and hot sauce to taste. Cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened. Add shrimp and cook another 2 minutes. Serve spooned over grits.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin weeks | seriously good | shrimp and grits | shrimp | seafood | low country

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Shrimp Ravioli

Will Cook for Writing



I wrote my first article for publication in 1989. The topic was a computer program I'd written and I was astounded when it was accepted for publication. So I wrote another article and it too was promptly accepted. This was back in the hay-day of programming magazines and there were lots of them around.

During the next six years I published three to five articles a year and began speaking at conferences, which meant writing papers for them. Then I was offered a job as Senior Editor at Windows Tech Journal and began writing a bi-monthly, and then monthly, editorial in addition to a couple of articles a year. The amount of writing I've done since then has fluctuated, but writing became how I identified myself.

You can say this for ready-mixes - the next generation isn't going to have any trouble making pies exactly like mother used to make. ~ Earl Wilson

In 2003 the last magazine I edited (and computer magazine I wrote for) closed down and left me bereft of a writing outlet — so I started Seriously Good (a reference to a search for great food and not a statement about either the food's or writing's excellence.)

At first I didn’t post a lot, partially because writing reminded me I was out of work and didn't have an inkling of what to do about it. But eventually I found a groove mostly creating new recipes and writing about it and SG became a cherished part of my day as I focused on efforts to build a professional life around food and cooking.

Then in January of this year things suddenly took off. I sold a few gift certificates for Christmas, I picked up a couple of new clients, cooking classes took off, and I picked up a weekly column, semi-monthly column, and sold three free-lance pieces. Whew!

But the work has come at the expense of this blog. This beloved and dependable friend. This past weekend I decided I needed to cook something specifically for it. Casting about for ideas I settled on homemade ravioli, but what to fill it with?

I had some shrimp and ricotta left over from a client's meal and with a little thought, came up with this. It's packed with shrimp flavor, nicely tweaked with an Italian herb mix and hot Hungarian paprika. It is Seriously Good.

Basic Pasta
Makes about 1/2 pound

1 1/3 c all-purpose flour
2 ea eggs

Place flour in a food processor. With motor running add eggs. Dough should quickly form a ball. If dough is too dry, add water a teaspoon at a time to running machine. If dough is too wet, add additional flour a tablespoon at a time and then process. Form dough into a ball, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate until ready to roll out – at least half an hour.

Set pasta rollers on widest setting and flatten dough enough to go through rollers. Fold dough in thirds, horizontally and roll again with a seamed edge first. Repeat four more times. This process kneads the dough and develops the glutin giving the pasta a toothiness.

Reduce roller setting by one and roll dough through. Repeat ruducing setting and rolling pasta through until desired setting is reached. Note 1: when the dough becomes too long to handle comnfortably, cut in half and finish rolling out each half. Note 2: If pasta begins to stick to rollers lightly dust with flour.

Shrimp Ravioli
Serves 4.

1/2 lb fresh pasta

1 lb shrimp — shelled
1/2 tsp coarse salt
1 tsp hot Hungarian paprika
1 tsp dried Italian herbs
3 tbsp minced fresh chives
2 tbsps olive oil
3 cloves garlic, large — peeled and minced
2 tsp unsalted butter
1/4 c ricotta cheese
1/4 c parmesan cheese — grated
1 ea egg — beaten
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 c shrimp stock
1/2 c white wine
1/2 c heavy cream
1/4 tsp ground white pepper

Coarsley chop shelled shrimp and season all shrimp with salt and cayenne to taste. In a 12" skillet, heat 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 clove garlic over medium heat, add shrimp, and saute until just cooked — about 1 minute per side. Add butter and toss to coat. Devide shrimp into two equal portions and allow to cool.

Filling:
Place 1/2 shrimp, ricotta, and parmesan in a food processor and process until finely chopped. Stir in egg.

Roll out pasta, but mot too thin — it has to be strong enough to hold the filling. Cut a strip in half lenthwise. Place heaping teaspoons of the filling in the center of one the strip, separated by about one inch. Brush edges of strip and between mounds of filling. Carefully lay the second strip over the top and press edges, and between mounds to seal. Note: try to include as little air in each sealed packet as possible. Trim the edges and but each mound into separate ravioli. Place on a lightly floured platter or baking sheet and refrigerate. Repeat for other strip of dough. Allow ravioli to chill for 30 minutes before cooking.

Sauce:
In a 12" skillet, heat garlic in 2 tbsp olive oil over low heat until fragrant and translucent. Add tomatoes, salt, and cayenne and increase heat to medium. Cook until reduced by half. Add wine and cook until reduced by half. Add shrimp stock and cook until reduced by half. Allow to cool.

Put remaining chopped shrimp and sauce base in a food processor and process until shrimp is finely minced. (For a smoother sauce, use a blender.) Return mixture to the skillet and add cream. Return to a vigourous simmer and reduce to desired consistency.

Cook pasta for about two minutes in vigorously boiling, salted water. Spoon sauce over the top and garnish with minced chives.

Technorati: Food | recipe | shrimp | pasta | ravioli

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