Louisiana Roasted Barbecue Shrimp

In New Orleans, this dish is simply known as barbecued shrimp despite its method of cooking, which doesn’t get anywhere near hot coals or even an electric grill. I’ve added “Roasted” so you know that the oven is where the action takes place. 

I came to barbecued shrimp late in life. It wasn’t something either of my Cajun grandmothers made, at least, I don’t recall ever eating it at their houses. Fresh gulf shrimp in their hands became an étouffée or were boiled whole in spicy seasoned water along with baby new potatoes and corn on the cob. Even my mother, born and raised in New Iberia, Louisiana, is more likely to bread and deep-fry shrimp or, if company is coming, cook them in a cheesy rich Newburg sauce. Now we are going back a few years but it was my cousin, Misty, who first introduced us, me and the barbecued shrimp. It was love at first bite.

We were visiting Misty one summer at her lovely home in New Orleans and she baked the shrimp with a full cup of butter and a package of wonderful seasonings from the folks at Bolner’s Spices. You know I had to go buy a packet or two right after that. But, living as we do overseas, remembering to buy enough spice packets to keep us going from year to year often just didn't happen. It was time to figure out how to do it on my own, from ingredients I could get. This week’s Sunday Supper theme of Fat Sunday - sharing decadent or Mardi Gras inspired recipes – was just the motivation I needed. I am calling this homemade version of roasted barbecue shrimp a great success based on my husband’s comment after the meal, “We could have this again, and often.” Why, yes. Yes, we could!

Ingredients (to feed two greedy people on shrimp and bread or four normal people, if you include side dishes like potatoes and salad)
1 lb 10 oz or 750g fresh shrimp or prawns (without heads, shells still on)
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 sprig fresh thyme
1 sprig fresh rosemary
4 cloves garlic
Olive oil
1 lemon
1 small purple onion
1/2 cup or 115g unsalted butter
1/4 cup or 60ml Worcestershire sauce
To serve: Chopped green onions for garnish and French bread for sopping up the sauce. Sides of boiled baby new potatoes and salad – optional

Method
Use a mortar and pestle to grind together into a thick paste the paprika, black pepper, salt, red pepper flakes, the leaves off of your sprigs of rosemary and thyme and the cloves of garlic.

Add in a couple of glugs (perhaps two tablespoons) of olive oil and stir until loosened.

Spoon the spice paste into a medium-sized bowl with your shrimp. Using a microplane or a fine grater, zest the yellow peel off of your lemon.

Give everything a thorough stir to make sure that the spices and zest are well mixed with the shrimp. Set aside.

Finely mince your purple onion. Put the minced onion and the butter into a large ovenproof pan on the stovetop. Gently melt the butter and sauté the onions over a medium heat.

When the onions are translucent, turn the fire off and remove the pan from the stove. Stir in the Worcestershire sauce and allow the mixture to cool.

When the pan is cool enough not to cook your seasoned shrimp on contact, pour them in and mix thoroughly. Set aside to marinate further.

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C.  When the oven is hot, give the shrimp another good stir and pop them into the oven, uncovered, for about 20 minutes or until they have turned pink and are cooked through. Squeeze on some of the lemon juice from your zested lemon.

Sprinkle with a little chopped green onion, if desired. Serve barbecued shrimp with sliced French bread to dip in the pan juices because, honestly, that’s the best part! This is a meal you will eat with your hands. It's gonna get messy but it's gonna be good!

Enjoy!

Whether you celebrate Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday, the final day of indulgence before the start of Lent, or just love decadent dishes, desserts and cocktails, you are going to love our round up today, hosted by the talented Leslie of La Cocina de Leslie. I know I want to try everything on the list!

Cocktails & Other Beverages:

• The Hurricane Cocktail Recipe from An Appealing Plan
• The French 75 from Kimchi MOM
• Sweet Potato Pie Smoothie from Peanut Butter and Peppers

Appetizers:

• Fried Oysters and Remoulade from Jane's Adventures in Dinner
• Shrimp in Mustard Sauce from Noshing With The Nolands
• Mini Sweet Potato Pies from MealDiva
• Cajun Crab Beignets from Delaware Girl Eats
• Pancetta and Mushroom Arancini from Ruffles & Truffles

Main Dishes:

• Creole Shrimp Po Boy Recipe from Small Wallet, Big Appetite
• Chicken and Sausage Gumbo from Supper for a Steal
• Sausage and Shrimp Jambalaya from Yours And Mind Are Ours
• Vegan Pizza Waffles from Killer Bunnies, Inc.
• Red Beans and Rice from Cookin' Mimi
• Baked Catfish Po'Boy from Curious Cuisiniere
• Muffaletta from Casa de Crews
• Bayou Seafood and Andouille Jambalaya from The Weekend Gourmet
• Seafood Gumbo from Take A Bite Out of Boca
• Cajun Rice and Beans from Momma's Meals
• Creole Celery Root Bisque (with Lobster) from The Wimpy Vegetarian
• Louisiana Roasted Barbecue Shrimp from Food Lust People Love
• Cajun Dirty Rice Bowls from The Dinner-Mom
• New Orleans Fried Chicken from Family Foodie

Side Dishes:

• Baked Endive and Pears in Blue Cream Sauce from Shockingly Delicious
• Okra Creole from Cindy's Recipes and Writings

Desserts:

• Banana Creme Pie with Honey Whipped Cream and Pecan Brittle from The Foodie Patootie
• Chocolate Ganache Tart from Melanie Makes
• Banana Bread Pudding from Gotta Get Baked
• Delicious Saffron Baked Beignets from A Kitchen Hoor's Adventures
• New Orleans Bread Pudding with Caramel Whiskey Sauce from La Bella Vita Cucina
• Polish Paczki from Cravings of a Lunatic
• Buttermilk Beignets from The Messy Baker
• Eggless Bread Pudding in a Jar from What Smells So Good?
• Mint Julep Bars from The Girl In The Little Red Kitchen
• Mardi Gras Cupcakes with Cinnamon Frosting from Hezzi-D's Books and Cooks
• Mardi Gras Long Johns from Kudos Kitchen by Renee 
• Mexican Chocolate Coffee Cake from La Cocina de Leslie
• Fasnetküchle from The Not So Cheesy Kitchen
• Cheesecake Swirl Brownies from That Skinny Chick Can Bake
• Pecan and Chocolate Pralines from Desserts Required
• Chocolate Raspberry Cake from Clarks Condensed
• Baked Coconut Beignets from Mess Makes Food
• Ravioli dolci di Carnevale from Manu's Menu
• Strawberry Paczki from Neighborfood
• Blackberry Fritters from girlichef
• Brownie Chocolate Chip Cheesecake from Magnolia Days
• Flourless Chocolate Cake in a Mug with Coconut Cream from Sue's Nutrition Buzz
• Pecan Bars from Pies and Plots
• "Skinny Tuesday" Bananas Foster Cheesecake Parfaits from Cupcakes & Kale Chips
• Mocha Pear Cake from Happy Baking Days
• Skinny Baked Beignets from Daily Dish Recipes

Chewy Pralines

These easy candies make great hostess gifts, wrapped up in a pretty dish with ribbons.  That's if you can get them out of the house before your family eats them all.  But not to worry, this recipe is easily doubled. They'd be perfect on the Mardi Gras party buffet table as well. 

Since we are from south Louisiana, Cajun country, pralines are a favorite in our family. The hard ones, the chewy ones, they are all good! My mom sent me a message recently with this recipe saying, "Can we make these for Christmas?" So we did!

Ingredients
Butter for greasing foil-lined pan

1/2 cup or 115g sugar

1/2 cup or 120ml light corn syrup

1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons or 30g butter 

1/2 cup or 120ml whole milk

1 1/2 cups or 180g pecan pieces

1/4 teaspoon vanilla


Method
Line a large baking pan with foil and butter it well.  Set aside.


Combine sugar, corn syrup and salt in heavy saucepan and bring to a boil.  



Cook to 245 °F or 118 °C on a candy thermometer.  If you don’t have a candy thermometer, as I don’t in this rented house in Rhode Island for Christmas, this is called the firm ball stage.  Get yourself a glass of cold water and after just a few minutes of boiling, drip a little of the syrup in the glass to test for doneness.  It is ready for the next step when it forms a firm ball that can still be mashed.  Check out this link for a visual.  



Add butter, milk and the pecans and cook to 242°F or 116°C degrees, stirring constantly.

My syrup and sugar mixture hardened up when I added the milk so I just heated it gently till it melted again and stirred constantly until it was completely combined.  Once again, if you don’t have a thermometer, cook the mixture until it’s thick and sticky and looks like it will hold its shape on a spoon. 



Add the vanilla and stir well.



Spoon out onto your greased foil lined pan, working quickly.  Use two spoons, one to scoop and the other to scrape the mixture off onto the foil.  If it hardens up, gently rewarm till it loosens enough to spoon out again. 



I got 18! 

Let cool.  Makes about 15-20 pieces, depending on the size of your spoon.  Or more if you make them bite-sized.

Enjoy!

Almost Mo's Crawfish Étouffée

Spicy rich crawfish étouffée, almost exactly as my Cajun grandmother used to make it. The perfect dish for Sunday Supper or a Mardi Gras party!

Hear that spinning noise? Wait, what? You don’t hear it. It’s so loud on my end and I know what it is. It’s my grandmother, in her grave, spinning. If you’ve read my About Me, you know I am originally from Southern Louisiana, home of crawfish and gumbo and Tabasco pepper sauce. In fact, many family members worked for Tabasco on Avery Island when I was growing up. We never used store-bought sauce because, if you washed and saved and brought your bottles back to my grandmother, she got them filled up with the best of the best, what we called bottom of the barrel. Scooped from the bottom of the barrels used to age the Tabasco, that sauce was the nectar of the gods.

As the relatives who worked on Avery Island grew older and retired, my grandfather, who always had a huge kitchen garden, started growing his own peppers from seeds he had been given by those same relatives. And my grandmother started making and bottling her own sauce from the Tabasco peppers. To this day, you will not find a bottle of store-bought Tabasco sauce in our houses. It’s too full of vinegar with too little body. I prefer to make my own as well, although I can’t get the Tabasco peppers anymore and have to use habaneros. But I digress.

Back to my grandmother and her spinning. Along with the disdain for store-bought Tabasco, I was brought up with a healthy dose of repugnance for any crawfish not caught wild in the Atchafalaya Basin. Those were the years of a short crawfish season just in the Springtime and when it was over, it was over, till the following year. Nowadays, with crawfish farming and crawfish imports from *gasp* China (here the spinning noise increases in volume) we can eat crawfish étouffée year round.

With apologies to my grandmother, we love crawfish étouffée and, in as much as I am causing her post-death exercise by using frozen Chinese crawfish, I try to make up for it by making it just as she would have. Or as close as I can get with the foreign interlopers which don’t have as much of the lovely orange fat as our locally caught specimens.

Ingredients

1/2 cup or 65g flour
1/2 cup or 120ml canola oil
2 medium onions
1 bunch of green onions
1 large green bell pepper or capsicum
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/2 cup or 115g butter
4 packs frozen crawfish (Each pack is 12 oz. I buy Boudreaux’s, which, despite its name, is indeed from China.)

(If you can't get crawfish, this can also be made with shrimp or prawns. It won't be the same but it will still be delicious.)



Method
Make a roux by mixing the flour and canola oil in a heavy pan. Cook over a medium heat, stirring frequently, until it turns a lovely caramel color. For full step by step instructions, check out this link: How to make roux. 

Meanwhile chop your onions, green onions and bell pepper.

When the roux is browned enough, tip in the vegetables and cook, covered, until the vegetables are very soft – about 10-12 minutes.

Add the tablespoon of tomato paste for color and the butter to replace the missing fat content and cook for a bit longer, perhaps another 10 minutes. (In the old days, the tomato paste and butter were not necessary as the crawfish came with a lot of the natural orange fat which, I have been told, is not allowed in packing any more. This fat gave the étouffée the lovely color without anything else added.)

Add in the crawfish and cook for another 10 minutes, covered. Season to taste with sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and cayenne.

Serve over white rice in the Tabasco gumbo bowls that your grandmother left you. If you are so blessed.

One of my most precious possessions - a set of Tabasco gumbo bowls.

Enjoy!