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Shrimp and Sausage Gumbo

16 Aug

 

I apologize that the picture above isn’t the best, but I forgot to take one of the finished product!  Had a busy day yesterday.  Anyway, this gumbo is delicious and something I only make occasionally, just because it is rather time-consuming.  Plus, the roux can be tricky to get just right.  This particular recipe calls for a dark brown roux, which doesn’t mean burned, it will become a dark brown color after 30-45 minutes of cooking.  This article from allrecipes.com has a great explanation of how to make a roux, with pictures of the different shades of roux to use as a guide.  Once the roux is right, the rest is easy and can be done either on the stove top or in the slow cooker.  This recipe uses sausage and shrimp, but you could also add chicken or substitute chicken for the shrimp or sausage.  I used my last bag of Zaycon Foods shrimp (sniff, sniff) to make this, along with smoked andouille sausage.  You can also change-up the vegetables a little if you want, I sometimes won’t use okra if I don’t have it and will use extra corn or celery in place of it.

 

Shrimp and Sausage Gumbo
Original recipe here

What you need:

1 cup butter (2 sticks)
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 chopped yellow onion
1/4 cup chopped celery
1/4 cup chopped green bell pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup sliced fresh okra
2 cups whole corn kernels
3 cups seafood stock (use vegetable or chicken stock if you can’t find seafood stock)
1 cup bottled clam juice (or use another 1 cup of stock in place of this)
1 cup chopped tomatoes
3 bay leaves
1 tablespoon dried parsley flakes
1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning (I use Louisiana Cajun seasoning)
1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
1 teaspoon dried basil leaves
1/2 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
1 1/2 cups cooked smoked sausage, sliced diagonally (I used Johnsonville Andouille)
2 pounds shrimp, cleaned and deveined
Cooked white rice

How to make it:

In a large saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.  Add the flour, and cook on low heat until the roux is dark brown; about 30 to 45 minutes, stirring constantly.  Be careful not to burn the roux.

Add the onions, celery, peppers and garlic and saute until translucent.

Mix in the remaining ingredients, except the rice, and simmer over medium-low heat until thick, about 1 hour.  Remove the bay leaves.  Serve over white rice.

Slow Cooker Method:

Make the roux the same as above, and saute the onions, celery, peppers, and garlic until translucent.  Transfer this all to the slow cooker and add remaining ingredients to the slow cooker, except the rice.  Cook on low heat for 6-8 hours, or high heat for 3-4 hours.  Remove bay leaves.  Serve over white rice.

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Our 4th of July Barbecue

4 Jul


Today is a day we celebrate our freedom in the USA.  So, I planned to make a little extra food today in celebration.  We had invited a friend over to join us, but he ended up cancelling.  We had a ton of food ready to go, but the extra will take us through the next few days with some spin-off dishes.  So, what did we have?

We had top sirloin steaks, which I got on sale for $3.99/lb at Safeway last week, that I marinated in Dale’s Seasoning.  The shrimp was from Zaycon Foods, and I marinated to give it a spicy, garlic, lime flavor (see recipe below).  I also grilled corn on the cob, and to do that I cut each corn cob in half, sprayed with olive oil, sprinkled a little salt and ground black pepper on, and wrapped in aluminum foil, and put on the grill for 10-15 minutes.  Finally, I made a potato salad.  Unfortunately, I was in a bit of a hurry and didn’t cook the potatoes quite right and so they were a little crunchy, but the rest of the taste was right on.  This recipe called for sweet relish and onion, so since I had made Refrigerator Pickles a couple days ago, I chopped up the onions and “pickles” to add to the potato salad.  The recipe for this is below as well.

I have quite a bit of steak and corn left, so I am thinking I will cut up the leftover steak and saute with green peppers and onions to make steak fajitas.  Then, I will use the corn to make Roasted Corn Salsa as a side to go with it.  I also made a few extra hard-boiled eggs when I boiled eggs for the potato salad, so I chopped them up and chopped up more of the onions and pickles to mix in with it, and then mixed in some mayonnaise and mustard to make egg salad for sandwiches for lunch tomorrow.

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Spicy Garlic Lime Shrimp

What you need:

1 pound large shrimp, fully cooked, peeled, and deveined
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 teaspoons tequila, optional (I omitted)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne (red) pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt

How to make it:

Mix together all ingredients, and toss to coat shrimp well.  Place in refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Option 1: Place shrimp on metal skewers.  If using bamboo skewers, soak the skewers in water while the shrimp marinades.  Heat a grill to high and lightly oil the grate.  Place shrimp on grill and cook for 2-3 minutes per side.

Option 2:  Heat a large skillet on the stove to medium high heat.  Pour contents of bowl into the skillet.  Stir, and cook about 5 minutes, just enough to heat shrimp through.

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Potato Salad

What you need:

1 lb potatoes
3 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and chopped
1 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup sweet pickle relish (I chopped my Refrigerator Pickles and some onions from that for the relish and onions)
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
1/4 teaspoon celery salt
1 tablespoon prepared mustard
1/4 cup mayonnaise
Ground black pepper to taste

How to make it:

Peel and chop potatoes.  Place in a large pot and cover with cold water.  Place on stove and bring to a boil.  Boil for 15-20 minutes, until potatoes are tender, but not mushy.  Drain water and allow to cool.

In a large bowl, combine the potatoes and the rest of the ingredients.  Stir well.  Chill in refrigerator before serving.

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Crunchy Cod

30 Mar

 

Since we got a lot of cod recently from a Zaycon Foods event, I have been coming up with different ways to use it.  My usual standby for white fish like cod is Fish Tacos, but I needed something different.  My husband isn’t thrilled with breaded fish normally, but I wted to make something my kids wouldn’t immediately turn their noses up at.  Turns out my husband really liked it, and my kids at least tried some, but weren’t overly crazy about it.  And I thought it was really good as well.  What I like about this is that it can be versatile.  I used Italian dressing, but I think it would be good with ranch dressing as well.  I used Panko, but regular or seasoned bread crumbs would work, or you could crush stuffing mix to use.  I like when I can easily substitute what I have on hand.  Tonight, I served it with Roasted Asparagus.

 

Crunchy Cod 

What you need:

1/4 cup Italian or ranch salad dressing
2 cups bread crumbs (Panko, seasoned, or crushed stuffing mix)
1 pound cod fillet, cut into smaller pieces
Olive oil

How to make it:

Preheat oven to 425 F.  Line a baking sheet with foil and spray with non-stick spray.

Dip each piece of cod in the salad dressing, then in the bread crumbs to fully coat.  Place on baking sheet, and generously spray each with olive oil.

Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes, or until flaky.  For best results, flip each piece of cod over halfway through cooking.

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Garlic Butter Shrimp

2 Mar

This meal is so easy.  Sometimes, I add some fresh or dried parsley, but decided to skip it this time.  I served this over white rice, but it would be good over wild or brown rice too.  Or, you could serve it over pasta of your choice.  I’ve served it over angel hair pasta, and they went really well together.  A vegetable like broccoli, asparagus, or green beans goes well with this.

Garlic Butter Shrimp
Recipe found here

What you need:

1 pound uncooked medium shrimp, peeled and deveined, tails removed
2 cloves garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup butter
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon dried parsley, optional (or 2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped)
Hot cooked rice, about 2 cups

How to make it:

In a large skillet, saute the shrimp and garlic in butter for 5 minutes or until shrimp turn pink. Add the lemon juice and parsley, if using; heat through. Serve with rice.

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Zaycon Foods Salmon

28 Feb

 

Tonight we tried out the Zaycon Foods salmon we recently bought.  It was very, very good salmon, better than any I have bought in the store.  I first cut the salmon fillet into 5 smaller pieces.  Then, I sprayed them with olive oil, and sprinkled with garlic salt and lemon pepper seasoning.

 

Then, I heated up our George Foreman grill and cooked the pieces.  It doesn’t take long until they are done.  We all enjoyed this salmon, even my kids!  I’m thinking about how I will make the next one.

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Shrimp & Broccoli Alfredo

26 Feb

Tonight I used the first of the Zaycon Foods seafood that I got recently, 1 pound of the white shrimp.  The shrimp is deveined and fully cooked, so I just thawed it by running cold water over it, then removed the tails.  I made some Alfredo Sauce using fresh garlic and parsley from the Italian themed veggie pack from Bountiful Baskets, added in the shrimp at the end, along with some broccoli from Bountiful Baskets that I had steamed.  It was very good.  The shrimp was very tasty, nice large, quality shrimp.  I served it over thin spaghetti, but the shrimp and broccoli with sauce was enough to eat just on its own, without noodles.  I will probably try a Garlic Butter Shrimp next, or maybe something with the cod.  So nice to have some seafood in the freezer to use for meals!

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Zaycon Foods Seafood

22 Feb

A while back I heard about Zaycon Foods.  They are a company that formed in 2009 to bring fresh meats to customers at wholesale prices.  They do events all over the US.  At the time, they weren’t delivering close enough to make it cost effective for me, so it fell off my radar.  In January, they had a boneless, skinless chicken breast and a hickory smoked bacon event that delivered to my area, but I missed out on ordering before it sold out.  Earlier this month, I found out they were having a seafood event.  We love seafood, and they were offering Frozen Alaskan caught Sockeye Salmon Fillets, Frozen Alaskan True Cod Fillets, and White Shrimp.  Each was available as a 20 pound unit.  I found some friends to share the units so that I could get some of each without breaking the bank too much, plus to try it out to see how this process works and find out the quality.

It’s pretty neat how it works.  The day of pick up, they have signs to direct you in to the truck.  You pull up, show them your receipt, they load it in your car.  I wasn’t sure how big the boxes would be, so I made sure I had plenty of room in my car.  Turns out, I was fine.

The boxes of cod were a little beat up, but the fish is all fine.   It was packaged in one large bag in the box, and it seems like each fillet is about 1 pound.  The shrimp was in 2 pound bags, 10 bags total.  The salmon was vacuum sealed in approximately 2 pound fillets, and has skin on one side .

It looks great and I can’t wait to try it out!  I am planning on using some shrimp this week, then will be deciding what to make next.

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Garlic Butter Shrimp

10 Oct

A while back I was in search of a new recipe using shrimp.  I had been using a shrimp alfredo recipe, but wanted something different.  That’s when I came across  this recipe for Garlic Butter Shrimp.  It’s really straightforward and fairly quick to put together.  For this meal, I only had 1/2 pound of small shrimp, so I halved the recipe.

Garlic Butter Shrimp

What you need:

1/4 cup butter
1 lb medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 Tbsp lemon juice
2 Tbsp fresh chopped parsley, or 1 Tbsp dried parsley
Cooked rice or pasta

How you make it:

Melt butter in a large skillet.  Saute garlic and shrimp in butter until shrimp turns pink.  Add in lemon juice and parsley and heat for a few minutes more.   Serve over rice or pasta.

For this meal, I served it over angel hair pasta.

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Fish Tacos with Avocado Cream Sauce

26 Sep

This is a great recipe I got from Lori over at My Kinda Rain.  Since I get tortillas and the Mexican themed veggie pack regularly from Bountiful Baskets, this has become a regular in our house when avocados are available and cheap.  I have played around with this recipe a bit, I don’t think I’ve made it the same way twice, but every time it has turned out great.  So, I will go through the recipe and talk about some of the alternatives I have done.

First, you make an avocado cream sauce.  For this you need:

1 avocado
1/2 cup sour cream
Lime juice
Onion (I’ve used yellow, red, or green, I think my favorite is red onion)

I now also on occasion add:

Garlic, minced or garlic salt, usually 1/4 to 1/2 tsp
Cilantro
Tomato, diced

This time, I used all of the above when making the sauce because I had cilantro and tomato on hand that needed to be used before it went bad.

Next, you cook the fish.  You need 1 lb of white fish, I use either cod or tilapia, depending on what I can get on sale.  You add 1-2 Tbsp of oil, I use olive oil, to a skillet.  Season the fish with lemon pepper seasoning and pan fry fish.

Cook until fish is no longer translucent and easily flakes with a fork.  Flake fish apart with a fork.

Next, you put together the tacos.  I usually use small flour tortillas, but have used small corn tortillas as well.  I add a tortilla to a small skillet, then put the fish, avocado cream sauce, and cabbage or lettuce.

I fold the tortilla over the topping, cook it for a few minutes, then flip and cook for a few minutes, until both sides are just starting to brown.

I usually serve this with Spanish rice and black beans.  I was worried that my girls wouldn’t eat these because it has fish, but they both eat these up!

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Salmon, Rice, and Roasted Cauliflower

12 Sep

I decided to try something new with my cauliflower from 9/10 Bountiful Baskets.  I had seen a post about roasted cauliflower on the Bountiful Baskets Facebook page, so I went to my go-to site for recipes, allrecipes.com, to get ideas on how to season and roast the cauliflower.  I decided I would serve it as a side to salmon, along with a box of long grain and wild rice.

For the roasted cauliflower, cut the head of cauliflower into even sized florets and preheated the oven to 400 degrees F.  I added 3 Tbsp of olive oil and 1 Tbsp of minced garlic to a gallon size bag. Then, I added the cauliflower florets to the bag and shook to coat them.  I added them to a baking pan I had sprayed with cooking spray, then sprinkled on some rosemary, about 1 tsp worth. I put the pan in the preheated oven.  After 10 minutes, I stirred the cauliflower.  I returned it to the oven for another 10 minutes, and the cauliflower had started to brown.  I removed from the oven and set my broiler to low. I then sprinkled 1/3 cup of Parmesan cheese and 1 1/2 tsp parsley.  I put the pan under the broiler for another 5 minutes until the Parmesan cheese had started to melt and the cauliflower was golden brown.

While the cauliflower was in the oven, I started on rice and the salmon.  The rice was a boxed mix, so I just followed the directions on the box.  The salmon I had on hand was frozen individually, and I thawed by putting in a sink of cold water for about 20 minutes.  While it was thawing, I started heating my George Foreman grill.  I cut open the packages and dried using paper towels.  I brushed olive oil on both sides, this salmon did not have scales on one side like it sometimes does.  If there are scales, I brush the olive oil only on the non-scale side.  I seasoned it with lemon pepper seasoning, then put them on the grill.  In just under 10 minutes, the salmon is done when it flakes easily.

In about 45 minutes, I had a filling meal.  Salmon is one of K’s favorites, so I try to make it 1-2 times a month.

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