Marinated Grilled Shrimp

This is a really good marinade that makes for some really good grilled shrimp.  The longer you marinate the shrimp, the more flavorful they'll be!  We ate them with a baked potato and a salad.  Feel free to scale the recipe up or down as you need to.

3 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup tomato sauce (or ketchup)
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
2 Tbsp chopped fresh basil
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
2 pounds fresh shrimp, peeled and deveined

In a large zip-top bag, combine all ingredients, making sure the shrimp are evenly coated.  Close bag, and refrigerate for at least an hour. 

Preheat grill or grill pan to medium heat, and lightly oil grill grate.  Using skewers if desired, cook shrimp for 2-3 minutes per side, or until opaque. 

Cheesy Seafood Gratin

Need some good meat-free recipes now that Lent is here?  This one was outstanding!  This would be such a treat for your family or dinner guests lucky enough to have it.  It makes 4 servings.
I really can't say enough good things about it.  It was creamy and filling and just excellent.  This was a recipe I got a few weeks ago from the Publix ad.  The original recipe called for two small lobster tails, but I don't have a clue how to cook those, so I just loaded up on shrimp.  It also called for a can of cream of shrimp soup, but I used cream of mushroom and had great results.  The recipe below reflects that. 

The recipe also calls for 10 ounces of lobster bisque, and I used a container of Publix's bisque.  I don't know that I've noticed or seen this at other grocery stores (a la Winn Dixie or Walmart); then again, if you have a Whole Foods or Central Market another wonderfully fancy grocery store nearby, you can probably find something very similar. 

Try this!  I hope you enjoy this as much as we did.

Cheesy Seafood Gratin

2 Tbsp unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
8 oz rotini pasta
0.8 lbs shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 cups Cheddar cheese, shredded
1 (10.75 oz) can cream of mushroom soup
1 (10 oz) container lobster bisque
1/2 cup bread crumbs
2 tsp grill seasoning

Preheat oven to 375.  Cook and drain pasta according to package directions.  Heat a large saute pan over medium.  Cook shrimp until cooked through and no longer pink, 3-4 minutes. 

Combine cheese, soup, bisque, pasta, and shrimp min a large bowl until blended; tranfer to a 2-qt baking dish.  Sprinkle bread crumbs across the top of the mixture, and dot with butter.  Bake 20-25 minutes or until golden and bubbly. 
 

Crawfish Etoufee

Maybe it was LSU's awesome win over Alabama on Saturday.  Maybe it was my excitement over my upcoming trip to New Orleans.  Maybe it's just homesickness; I don't know.  Whatever it was, I decided to make some crawfish etoufee last night, and it was quite good.  The recicpe is an old one from The Times Picayune; I cut the original recipe in half (I'm posting the half), and it could feed 3-4 people.  One serving is SO filling!  You serve the etoufee over rice, and you really only serve some crusty bread and maybe a salad with it. 

It's not exactly crawfish season (that's more in the spring and summer), and it's not like we get many of them in Georgia anyway, but I bought some frozen crawfish tails over the summer and used one a pound in this recipe.

The recipe says to season the finished product with salt and cayenne.  If you're afraid of cayenne pepper, just go with freshly ground black pepper.  It needs quite a bit of salt.  I was hesitant to season the whole pot just in case I put in too much or more than Bizzuck might like, so we seasoned our own bowls. 


Crawfish Etoufee

1/2 stick butter
3/4 cup chopped yellow onion
1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper
1/4 cup chopped celery
1 pound peeled crawfish tails
1 1/2 tsp cornstarch dissolved in 1/2 cup water
Salt and cayenne pepper to taste
1 Tbsp finely chopped fresh parsley
1 Tbsp chopped green onion (green part only)
White rice

Heat the butter in a large, heavy pot over medium heat.  Add the onions, bell peppers, and celery; cook, stirring until soft and lightly golden, 8-10 minutes.  Add the crawfish and cook, stirring occasionally, until they give off a little liquid, another 8-10 minutes.  Add the cornstarch-water mixture and reduce heat to medium-low.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture thickens, about 8 minutes.  Season with salt and cayenne.  Remove from heat.  Serve over rice, and garnish with parsley and green onions. 

Jalapeno Cheese Oysters

We love jalapenos and cheese, so Biz and I thought these were fantastic.  (Thank you, Jay, for introducing us to these!)  You have some freedom with these too; you can use whatever cheeses you like, or you can chop up the jalapenos if you don't want a whole slice on each oyster.  I guess if you really wanted to go the Tex-Mex route, you could skip the cracker and serve on tortilla chips.  Again, we had already baked the oysters in their shell so they would be open enough to shuck, but if you're able to get the shells open without the help of heat, you might want to bake them for longer in the oven when they have cheese on top.

Jalapeno Cheese Oysters

1 dozen oysters, shucked
1/2 cup shredded cheese (we used Cheddar and mozzarella, but you can use whatever you like)
12 jalapeno slices
Crackers for serving

Preheat oven to 400.  Grease small baking dish, and place oysters on the bottom.  Sprinkle oysters with cheese, and top with one jalapeno slice each.  Bake for 6 minutes, or until cheese is melted.  Serve with crackers or tortilla chips. 

Oysters Parmesan

This is a great oyster recipe.  I baked these twice, whether I was supposed to or not--once to get the shell to open to shuck them, and the second time to melt the cheese and mix together all the flavors; it certainly didn't hurt them.  I was later told that I didn't have to scoop them up on a cracker--that I could have just eaten them with a fork--so it works either way.  Again, we steamed them in the shells in the oven for 10 minutes at 400 so that we could shuck them, and then we went from there.  There are very few measurements in this recipe, so you can make it however you like.

Oysters Parmesan

1 dozen oysters
Parmesan cheese
Creole seasoning (Tony Chachere's or something similar)
1/4 cup white wine
Breadcrumbs

Grease bottom of small baking dish, and sprinkle breadcrumbs on the bottom.  Season shucked oysters with creole seasoning, and place on breadcrumbs.  Sprinkle generously with Parmesan cheese and more breadcrumbs.  In bottom of dish, pour white wine until it soaks up breadcrumbs; you may not need the entire 1/4 cup.  Bake in oven at 400 for 6 minutes. 

Roasted Oysters

Consider this Oyster Week on I Hope You're Hungry.  Bizzuck and I had more oysters than we knew what to do with over the weekend, and somehow all of our oyster-eating friends weren't available last night.  We tried them many different ways, and now you get the benefit! 

Normally when we roast oysters, the first thing Biz does is build a very hot fire.  He has a special metal table that he puts over the fire, and then he'll shovel a few dozen oysters in their shells onto the table.  From there, he covers the oysters with sheets of wet burlap, and then sprays the burlap with more water.  After a few minutes, the oyster shells have steamed open, so you can remove the wet burlap to a bucket, shovel the steamed oysters onto a table, and start shucking away.  Like I said, that's normally the way we do it, but of course I didn't take a picture of this when we did it on Saturday.

Sunday was a different story.  We did everything in the oven yesterday; shucking was too difficult without some kind of heat helping us out.  To fix that, we loaded up a baking sheet with as many oysters as possible and loaded them in a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes.  From there, shuck them (pop them open by sticking a knife in the opening and prying the two sides apart), scrape the oyster onto a cracker, and put a dab of hot sauce on there. 

They're slimy creatures but very tasty!

Crab Cakes

I don't know what to say about these other than the fact that they're delicious.  Bizzuck loves crabcakes and requested them over a week ago.  We finally got around to making them last night, and they really are the best. 

I made them about the size of my palm and came out with fifteen crab cakes, so you might want to adjust the recipe for the number of mouths you're feeding.

Next time you want some tasty crab cakes, try these.  I adapted this recipe from Paula Deen's, so you know it's good.

Crab Cakes

1 lb. crabmeat, picked free of shells
1 sleeve Ritz crackers, crushed
3 green onions, green and white parts, finely chopped
1/2 cup finely chopped bell pepper
1/4 cup mayonaisse
1 egg
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp dry mustard
1/2 lemon, juiced
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp salt
Dash of cayenne pepper
Breadcrumbs
Vegetable/peanut/canola oil

In a large bowl, mix together all ingredients except bread crumbs and oil.  Shape into patties and dust with breadcrumbs. 

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  When oil is hot, carefully place crab cakes, in batches, in pan and fry until browned, about 4-5 minutes per side.  Serve warm with preferred sauce. 

Shrimp and Gouda Grits

Continuing with my Louisiana posts, here's one from something we actually cooked. Shrimp and grits is always a good dish, but there weren't words to describe this one. This was one of the most delicious dishes I've ever tasted, but I feel like I should warn you: it's very rich. Butter, heavy cream, whole milk, half a pound of Gouda--watch out. It really didn't take long to cook, especially since there were three of us chopping the vegetables and measuring everything out. ("New Orleans Lady" just came on the radio as I'm typing this! Too perfect.) My sweet friends got this recipe from a John Folse cookbook, and he always knows what he's doing in the kitchen.

Shrimp and Gouda Grits

Ingredients for Shrimp:

2 dozen shrimp, peeled and deveined

1 stick butter

1/4 cup red bell pepper, minced

1/4 cup yellow bell pepper, minced

1/4 cup green bell pepper, minced

1/2 cup minced celery

1 Tbsp minced garlic

1/2 cup minced andouille sausage

1/4 cup flour

4 cups shrimp stock (we used seafood stock)

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

1/4 cup chopped green onions

salt and black pepper to taste

In a large skillet, melt butter over medium high heat. Add all vegetables and andouille, and saute for 3-5 minutes, or until slightly golden. Slowly add shrimp stock, one cup at a time, stirring until a sauce-like consistency is achieved. Additional stock may be added if necessary. Blend in cream, bring to a low boil, and then add green onions and shrimp. Cook 3-5 minutes or until shrimp curl and turn pink. Season with salt and pepper.

Ingredients for Grits:

1 1/2 cup stone ground grits (we used quick grits)

3 1/2 cups whole milk

3 1/4 cups water

1 1/2 Tbsp salt

1/2 tsp white pepper

4 Tbsp butter

1/2 lb shredded Gouda cheese (not smoked)

In a one-gallon stockpot, combine the milk, water, salt, pepper, and butter. Bring to a low boil over medium-high heat. Add grits and stir well. Reduce heat to medium-low and cover. Cook 12-14 minutes, stirring occasionally until thickened (5-7 minutes for quick grits). Remove from heat and blend in cheese. Adjust seasonings, if necessary. Top each portion of grits with four shrimp and a generous serving of sauce.