Here’s an original and delightful recipe for Deep Fried Squash Blossoms With Minced Shrimp from Wandering Chopsticks.
Ingredients:
As many squash blossoms as you want to eat
About 2 shrimp per squash blossom
A clove of garlic or two
A dash of fish sauce
A dash of salt
A dash of sugar
How to Make Deep Fried Squash Blossoms With Minced Shrimp
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Here’s a hearty and wonderful summer friendly recipe for Chef Rick Moonen’s Catfish Sloppy Joe from Esquire. Tilapia can be substituted for the catfish if you prefer.
Ingredients:
8 oz skinless catfish (or tilapia) fillet, cut into 1/3-inch dice
Coarse salt
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 small onion, diced (about 3/4 cup)
1 small green bell pepper, diced (about 3/4 cup)
2 tsp paprika
1 cup barbecue sauce
Unsalted butter
2 oversized burger buns (or other soft rolls), split horizontally
How to Make Chef Rick Moonen’s Catfish Sloppy Joe
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TravelOZ has made a fascinating video about the crabs of Christmas Island (especially Coconut Crabs, which can climb trees and crack coconuts in their massive claws) which you can see below (or here).
If you enjoyed that video, you won’t want to miss the one below which shows what a massive influx of tiny baby crabs into the area looks like. The streets literally run red with millions of new baby crabs…quite an extraordinary sight!
Here’s a wonderful, delicious recipe for Chipotle Lime Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp from Simply Recipes.
Ingredients:
12 large, raw, peeled and deveined shrimp
2 Tbsp olive oil
Zest from 1 lime
Juice from one lime (about 2 Tbsp)
1/4 teaspoon chipotle powder (or more to taste)
6 strips thin bacon, cut in half (12 pieces)
Skewers (for grilling) or toothpicks (for oven)
How to Make Chipotle Lime Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp
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Green cabbage is the plain-jane librarian of the produce aisle. Nobody gives her a second glance - until she takes off her glasses and lets down her hair, then…wow! Suddenly, she’s hot! Try this dish and you’ll start looking at cabbage very differently…
The flavors of the savory pork & shrimp filling in these treats is echoed in the rice because you use the cooking stock to make the Zesty Lemon Rice. And the buttery, lobster-flavored shrimp sauce on top of it all is so good it should be classified as a controlled substance!
For the best results, buy the best quality lobster base you can find, one that contains lobster, butter, sea salt, and little else.
Here’s a photo of the Pork and Shrimp Cabbage Rolls With Butter Poached Shrimp below.
Ingredients:
For the Rolls:
1 head green cabbage
1 lb lean ground pork
1 lb uncooked shrimp, peeled and coarsely chopped (divided in half)
1 egg, beaten
1 1/2 tsp seafood seasoning (such as Old Bay)
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp white pepper
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup finely chopped celery
1 finely minced scallion
1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs
1 ½ cups water
1 ½ Tbsp lobster base
For the Shrimp Sauce:
4 Tbsp butter
1 tsp lobster base
For the Rice:
1 1/2 cups medium grain rice
2 Tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp lemon zest
2 Tbsp finely minced parsley
PREPARATION:
Separate the cabbage into leaves (you’ll need about 15 or so; don’t worry if they tear) and steam them for about 10 minutes in a deep, lidded pot with just enough water to cover the bottom. You want them to be soft enough to bend easily.
While the cabbage is steaming, mix together the pork, half of the chopped shrimp, and the next 9 ingredients (from the beaten egg through the bread crumbs) and cook a small piece of the filling to test for salt & seasoning. Adjust if necessary.
Take about 1/3 of a cabbage leaf (approximately palm-sized) and roll up a generous tablespoon of filling (don’t worry sealing up the sides, etc.; think open-ended cigars rather than packets. You want the flavors to mingle in the pot.)
Layer the rolls in the pot. Combine the water and the lobster base, and pour over the rolls. Bring just to a boil, cover, reduce heat, and simmer 15 - 20 minutes. Remove the rolls (reserving the cooking stock) and keep warm.
Strain the cooking stock and add enough additional water to equal 3 cups. Add the rice, lemon juice, lemon zest, and parsley, and bring just to a boil, cover, reduce heat, and simmer 15 minutes.
Just before the rice is done, melt the butter and the lobster base in a small saucepan; gently poach the remaining chopped shrimp until just cooked. To serve, top the rice with the cabbage rolls, and spoon over some of the buttery shrimp.
Serves 4 (or two if you’re hungry/greedy like us!)
Enjoy!
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RSTaylor100 has made an informative video about spearfishing with the Low Country Diver Team which you can see below (or here).
Here’s a refreshing recipe which you can make outdoors on a grill for Grilled Halibut Fajitas from Crabby Cook.
Ingredients:
(4) 1/3 lbs halibut fillets (swordfish, snapper and mahi-mahi also work well)
1 TBSP cooking oil
1 lime, quartered
1 lime, halved
1 large yellow onion, sliced in rings
1 red pepper, cut into strips
1 TBSP cooking oil
Salt & Pepper
Fajita Rub
1 TBSP Onion Powder
1 TBSP Garlic Powder
2 tsp. ground ginger
2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp dry mustard
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp dried parsley
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp ground pepper
1/4 tsp salt
How to Make Grilled Halibut Fajitas
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My Splendid Table has a wonderful, simple overview of how to make and use beurre monte, a workhorse sauce relied upon by such chefs as Thomas Keller and Tom Colicchio.
The page also shares Keller’s recipe for Sweet Potato Agnolotti with Sage Cream, Brown Butter, and Prosciutto which makes prominent use of the sauce.
(Wikipedia also has a good entry on beurre monte here.)
Here’s a few links to some recipes that feature beurre monte sauce…
With the recent news that restaurant chains Bennigans and Steak and Ale are declaring bankruptcy, a possible silver lining is starting to emerge from the dark clouds of the American casual dining scene; the rise of the local restaurant.
One surprising indicator of this potential trend is that local neighborhood restaurants overshadowed their often flashier, more famous counterparts at this year’s James Beard Awards.
Of course, Steak and Ale and Bennigans aren’t the only restaurant chains feeling the economic pinch.
The Cheesecake Factory recently posted disappointing quarterly earnings. Old Country Buffet, Baker’s Square, and Village Inn are other chain casualties of the downturn.
One of the main reasons cited for the Bennigans bankruptcy was that many customers perceived the chain as being generic with outdated menu offerings.
Bill Marvin, author of Restaurant Basics which looks at restaurants from the diners’ point of view described the chain as being, “…just one more place to eat.” according to this Newsweek article.
As Marvin says, “The thing that’s been missing in the hospitality business is hospitality.” His prescriptive for restaurants in this economy is to “provide a heartfelt experience…it’s about being a real honest place for hospitality, where people really care and you feel well served.”
Luckily, with an emphasis on personal service and their non-cookie cutter menu items, many good local restaurants are uniquely poised to take advantage of this post-Bennigans opportunity.
Often, smaller restaurants are much more open to using fresh, local ingredients that showcase regionally inspired flavors than their big chain counterparts. As a result, they are more likely to attract the kind of skilled chefs who have the talent to make the most of the advantages that come with being small but flexible.
Also, since they’re usually owned and managed by people from the areas they serve, local restaurants can more accurately gauge and predict their diners’ evolving tastes.
Local restaurants also increase the demand for area jobs and services that keep revenue circulating within the communities they serve, unlike revenues from many national restaurant chains, where much of the money often ends up going out of state to their distant corporate headquarters and bulk suppliers.
Best of all, every time diners eat such regional dishes as Charleston, SC’s shrimp and grits, Pennsylvania Dutch shoofly pie, and New Orleans crawfish etouffee they are in effect both celebrating and casting a vote for the vibrancy of regional American cuisine and the local restaurants that serve it.
This is a truly beautiful and tasty appetizer. If you’ve ever had Shrimp Saganaki in a Greek restaurant you’ll know what I mean. Here’s a recipe for Shrimp Saganaki from the folks at Kalofagas: Greek Food and Beyond.
Ingredients:
6 large whole shrimp
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 small red onion, sliced
1/4 green bell pepper, sliced
1/4 yellow bell pepper, sliced
Diced hot banana pepper (amount depends on how spicy you like your dish)
1 medium ripe tomato, diced
1/2 cup button mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup Greek feta, coarsely crumbled
1 tsp. dried Greek oregano
Splash of Ouzo
Grated Mozzarella (or other white cheese)
Salt to taste
How to Make Shrimp Saganaki
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Here’s a simple but delightful recipe for Shrimp Deviled Eggs from Mark Bittman’s NY Times Food Blog, Bitten.
Ingredients:
1/4 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
4 eggs
2 or 3 tablespoons chopped good olives
1 tablespoon minced onion
2 tablespoons chopped parsley leaves, more for garnish
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
How to Make Shrimp Deviled Eggs
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Ever attend a wedding or birthday party where you couldn’t help noticing that something was a little (or a lot) wrong with the cake they were serving? Then you’ll enjoy Cake Wrecks, a blog that showcases some of the worst looking, most visually unfortunate, and thematically tasteless professionally made cakes we’ve ever seen.
Here’s a sampling of a few of the confectionery monstrosities you’ll find at Cake Wrecks…
How about some cakes guaranteed to cast a pall over your special day:
Ow my eyes…here’s 2 cakes that only a Medusa could love:
Here’s two cakes that are so ugly and disgusting that I can’t show you a preview photo on this site for fear of permanently killing your appetite. Click at your own risk:
We’ll end with a pair of cakes that I can’t help liking…two puffer fish themed cakes:
(Photo Credits: All photos courtesy of Cake Wrecks)
Here’s an elegant and sophisticated recipe inspired by Nobu’s famous black cod with miso…Miso-Marinated Sea Bass from the folks at Rasa Malaysia.
Ingredients:
Sea bass (about 5 oz. piece)
1 teaspoon white miso paste
1 teaspoon mirin
2 teaspoon sake
1/2 teaspoon ginger juice
1/2 teaspoon palm sugar (sugar)
How to Make Miso-Marinated Sea Bass
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Warning: The warm, rich, multi-layered flavors of these visually appealing appetizers will tempt you very strongly to eat all 24 of them by yourself in the kitchen and tell your guests that you, uh…dropped the whole tray on the floor! Yeah, that’s it! They’ll believe that! Just make sure you’re not still chewing when you give them the bad news.
Here’s a photo of the Shrimp & Blue Cheese Blossoms with Vidalia Cranberry Marmalade below.
Ingredients:
2 Tbsp butter
3 cups diced Vidalia onions
1 cup dried cranberries
1/4 tsp anise seed
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1/4 cup water
1/4 tsp white pepper
Pinch of salt
4 oz cream cheese, softened
Cooking oil spray
2 oz blue cheese (I use Maytag Blue)
24 wonton wrappers (or 6 egg roll wrappers cut into quarters)
24 medium (41-50 count) cooked shrimp
Minced fresh chives (optional)
PREPARATION:
Melt the butter over medium heat in a heavy saucepan. Add the onions and the cranberries and cook, stirring regularly, until the onions have softened and colored (about 20 minutes.) Stir in the anise seed, brown sugar, lemon juice, water, pepper, and salt. Cook for 10-15 minutes more, stirring regularly.
While the onions are cooking, crumble the blue cheese in a medium bowl. Add the cream cheese and mix thoroughly.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spray mini muffin pans with cooking spray. Press a wonton wrapper into each cup, folding the corners out like petals. Put about half a teaspoon of cheese mixture into each, add about 1 teaspoon of onion marmalade, and top with a shrimp.
Bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool slightly before serving. Sprinkle with minced fresh chives, if desired.
Makes 24 appetizers.
Enjoy!
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Looking for a way to enjoy the delightful flavor of steamed mussels at home? Here’s a recipe for Steamed Mussels with Almonds from the folks at Beyond Salmon (plus Helen’s informative take on the ins and outs of successfully preparing mussels at home).
Ingredients:
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 shallot, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1/4 cup chopped almonds (untoasted)
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup water
2 Lb mussels
2 Tbsp chopped parsley
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
How to Make Steamed Mussels with Almonds
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Charles Zeran, Executive Chef of Four Moons Restaurant in Orangeburg, SC, is the winner of 9 DiRoNA (Distinguished Restaurants of North America) Awards and 9 Wine Spectator Awards in his previous kitchens (Stone Manor, Middletown, Maryland; Stars Waterfront Cafe, Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina; and The Lodge at Glendorn, a AAA Four Diamond and Relais & Chateaux property in Bradford, Pennsylvania.)
Not bad for a former attorney and self-taught chef who started his professional cooking career at the age of 32. His delicious and visually arresting dishes are the result of his interest in molecular gastronomy coupled with his own broad experience and unique vision.
He talked with us about the winding road that brought him to where he is today, his favorite restaurants, his Western Tennessee childhood food memories of peach ice cream on Independence Day and traditional New Year’s meals, as well as his guilty food pleasures…
When did first you start getting interested in food and cooking? Please share some early cooking memories…
I have cooked all my life for fun. Even as a child. Some early food memories: making caramel fudge and taffy with my grandmother in western Tennessee where I grew up. My father making Steak Diane in the seventies when I was about 10 and waiting for it to catch fire when the brandy was added. Traveling with my dad as a child to New Orleans and having beignets and cafe au lait at Cafe Du Monde, and to Grand Bahama Island and having cracked conch right off the boat and Johnny cakes prepared by the native Bahamians.
It must have been difficult for you to make the leap from your original career to food and beverage. What happened that gave you the impetus to make that leap?
I became a lawyer I think more because it was expected and for the money more than because it was something I really wanted to do. Not because there had ever been a lawyer in my family, but because I had excelled in school and was expected to do something like a doctor, lawyer, or Indian chief.
After 7 years of divorce law in Northern Florida and Western North Carolina, I decided that life was too short to do something that I really didn’t love and began to think what would be better. I always loved to cook. The first food I ever sold was homemade lasagna to Italian restaurants while I was still an attorney in North Carolina. Made the pasta and dried it on a clothes rack.
One day I decided that I had had enough and spent the next six months winding up my practice, took a 3 month adventure around the Western United States looking for somewhere I wanted to be more than the Appalachian region of North Carolina. I ended up in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state and took a job in a roadside diner cooking breakfast. After about 4 months of this, I met the owner of a bistro in one of the tourist towns in the Cascades who offered me a line cook job, which I declined. But we hit it off being the same age and both growing up outside Memphis, so we had a lot of common history.
A few days later the manager of her kitchen was fired and she called me and asked me if I wanted to run their kitchen my first chef position with 4 months of restaurant experience and not a clue. Trial by fire.
What kind of cooking do you most admire?
Avant garde. When I want to feed I like it simple, but when I want to dine, I want to be entertained and I want something to think about, not just chew on.
What ingredients do you especially like to work with?
Seafood is probably my favorite medium. Especially tuna, scallops, and any really fresh fish that I can either use raw or cook. I also really like raw or practically raw meats lamb, venison, and good beef made into wonderful tatakis, carpaccios, and tartares. I love Asian ingredients and flavors, especially Japanese the flavors are so complex, but seem so pure.
Who are your food inspirations and why…Also, who are your favorite chefs and cookbook/food authors?
Ferran Adria, Grant Achatz, Homaro Cantu, etc for their creativity in molecular gastronomy. Thomas Keller for the purity and intensity of taste of his food, and the subtle layers of flavor. Michel Richard of Citronelle for his playfulness, and the mixing of pastry techniques into savory dishes. Rick Tramonto for the same reasons as both Keller and Richard. Masaharu Morimoto for his use of western techniques with Asian ingredients and vice versa without ending up with fusion for fusion sake, which I hate.
What part does travel play in your food inspirations?
Only incidentally. Haven’t done much traveling for food’s sake.
Where do you like to go and what cuisines inspire you?
The Keys for the fresh seafood. DC for some of the restaurants I used to go to when I lived in that area Citronelle, Jose Andres’ Cafe Atlantico, The Inn at Little Washington, Persimmon, Kinkaid’s.
Any favorite meals you’d like to share?
The Inn at Little Washington for the best service I have ever experienced. Michelle Richard’s Citronelle for the whimsical food, like the silver penguin statuette carrying an egg filled with scrambled eggs topped with caviar.
What do you like to do to blow off the stresses of the kitchen?
When the day is done I am relaxed. I found that the difference between being a lawyer and being a chef is the type of stress being an attorney involves chronic stress the same client with the same issues continues for months. Being a chef involves acute stress when the day is done, the day is done. Chronic stress is draining. Acute stress is a rush.
What tips would you offer to someone considering a career as a chef?
Don’t — unless you really have the passion. If it’s not something you have to do because there is something inside you that makes you, it will be a miserable career and you won’t do it well. But if that thing is inside you, it’s like Confucius said “If you find a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
What advantages do you bring to the table as a self educated chef?
Not knowing what the rules are, I don’t know better than to break them.
Would you like to publish a cookbook someday? If so, what would its focus be?
Maybe the crossover between sweet and savory.
Favorite comfort foods?
Biscuits and gravy. Steak. Mashed potatoes with white truffle oil. Bacon. Bacon. Bacon.
Favorite barbecue memory?
We always barbecued a baby goat on the Fourth of July when I was growing up. It cooked most of the day. While it was cooking, we made a stew in a big cauldron in the back yard using all the game we had in
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