Creamy Shrimp Newburg #FishFridayFoodies

Succulent shrimp and golden buttery mushrooms make this creamy shrimp Newburg a rich, delicious dish that is perfect as a fancy appetizer or to serve with a big green salad as a main course. You can also serve it over pasta or rice. 

 

When I was quite young we lived in Trinidad in the West Indies. My dad worked for Texaco as a reservoir engineer so we lived in the Texaco camp called Pointe-a-Pierre. According to my mother, the usual small town politics and hierarchy were at work there, with your position in “society” determined by your husband’s job. 

All I know it that it seemed my parents were invited to a lot of parties! My older sister and I were both avid readers so we would enjoy what we called BYOB dinners when they were out – Bring Your Own Book. We’d eat and read at the table very happily, no need for conversation. Years later, when she got old enough, our little sister would join in as well. 

My mom also loved to host dinner parties. She tells me that she felt sorry for the people who were staying in temporary Texaco housing and eating at the mess hall so she always made a point of inviting them over for a home cooked meal. 

Surrounded by the Caribbean Sea, seafood was plentiful and inexpensive in Trinidad and its neighboring islands. Shrimp Newburg was one of her favorite dishes to serve then and in later years once we'd moved on. I remember it very fondly as well.  Who can resist shrimp in such a creamy sauce?

Creamy Shrimp Newburg

I buy headless, cleaned easy peel frozen shrimp at my nearby supermarket. One pound or 450g yields about three-quarters of a pound or 340g after the shells are removed. If you are starting with peeled, cleaned fresh shrimp, that’s the amount you’ll need for this recipe, which has been adapted from a lobster Newburg one on What’s Cooking America. You can also read about the history of this great dish there.

Ingredients 

1 lb or 450g headless shrimp (weight before shelling)

3 egg yolks

1 1/2 cups or 360ml heavy cream, divided 

8 oz baby bella or cremini mushrooms, cleaned, hard stem removed, sliced

2 tablespoons butter 

1 tablespoon dry sherry

3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

For topping: 

4 heaped tablespoons fresh breadcrumbs

Drizzle olive oil

Optional for garnish:

Flat leaf parsley

Method

If you are using frozen shrimp, thaw and drain them. Peel and clean the shrimp. If they are large, cut them in half. Smaller shrimp can be left whole. 

In a mixing bowl or large measuring cup, whisk the egg yolks with 1/2 cup or 120ml of the heavy cream. Set aside. 

Clean the mushrooms. Trim and discard any hard stem ends. Slice the mushrooms. 

In a large nonstick skillet, melt the butter over a medium heat and cook the sliced mushrooms, stirring occasionally, until they lose all their liquid and turn a lovely golden brown on both sides. 

Add in the shrimp. Cook them for just a few minutes, until they turn pink. 

Add the rest of the plain cream along with the sherry, salt and cayenne. 

Turn the heat down to simmer and cook for a further few minutes, until the mixture slightly reduces. Drizzle about 1/4 cup or 60ml of the sauce into the yolk mixture, whisking rapidly as you do until it is completely combined. 

Stir the yolk mixture into the cooking pan. Cook over a low heat for a few minutes until the sauce thickens. 

Divide the shrimp Newburg into four ramekins or, if you are so fortunately, large scallop shells. Place them on a large baking pan. 

I scrunched up some foil and pressed the shells down so the foil made a little secure base for each. This keeps the shells horizontal as well. 

Sprinkle the tops with the fresh breadcrumbs and drizzle a little olive oil over each. 

Heat your oven broiler and put the baking pan in the oven on a middle rack for about 4-5 minutes. Watch carefully so that the tops don’t burn. When they are golden brown, remove from the oven. 

Garnish your creamy shrimp Newburgs with a little parsley, if desired, and serve immediately. 

Enjoy! 

This month my Fish Friday Foodie friends are sharing seafood dishes fit for company. Check out all the wonderful recipes below. Many thanks to our host, Rebekah of Making Miracles. 

• Creamy Shrimp Newburg by Food Lust People Love
• Crispy Shrimp Triangle Spring Rolls by Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Dungeness Crab Risotto and Some Italian Bubbles by Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Easy and Elegant Garlicky Shrimp Pasta by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Prawn Patio by Sneha's Recipe
• Tilapia Curry by Zesty South Indian Kitchen
• Mediterranean Baked Fish by Making Miracles
  
  
  
  
  
  Are you a food blogger who would you like to join Fish Friday Foodies? We post and share new seafood/fish recipes on the third Friday of the month. To join our group please email Wendy at wendyklik1517 (at) gmail.com. Visit our Facebook page and Pinterest page for more wonderful fish and seafood recipe ideas. 

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Ham and Cheese Elephant Rolls #BreadBakers

Children and adults alike will love these soft ham and cheese elephant rolls. They are cute AND tasty! I mean really. Look at their golden ears and currant eyes!

I have no idea what I was browsing the internet for when I came across bread dough shaped like animals last year. There were hedgehogs, bunnies, puppy and kitty faces, even some starfish and so much more. 

That gave me this idea for a Bread Bakers theme and, bless their hearts, my bread baking friends were up for the challenge to start off the new year. Make sure you scroll down to the bottom to see the menagerie they’ve created! 

Many years ago, while we were living in Malaysia, we had several opportunities to visit an elephant sanctuary a short distance from our home. Whenever we had visitors to entertain, it became a highlight of their holiday. We’d put on our swimsuits topped with t-shirts and shorts, load up the car with fruit to share with the elephants and make our way through up the highway, then into the jungle. 

The sanctuary showed small groups of visitors a short introductory film where we learned about their work rescuing orphaned or threatened elephants and then came the exciting part, we got to feed and bathe them! 

(Hence the swimsuits – the latter part was a wet job! If you got really lucky, you got to ride one of the elephants down to the river for the bath. We all got lucky a few times over the years.)

Possibly due to this frequent early exposure, our younger daughter became a collector of elephant statues, big and small. I thought it would be fun to create some of those wonderful creatures and take photos of the elephant rolls with some of her collection. 

Ham and Cheese Elephant Rolls

This recipe is adapted from one I found originally on the Japanese site Cookpad. Fortunately they also have a sister site in the UK which has been translated into English - which still took me a while to work through. I got there in the end!

Ingredients

For the dough:

1/3 cup or 80ml milk 

2 teaspoons butter

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1 1/4 cups or 156g bread flour

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 egg, separated into white and yolk

For the filling:

3 oz or 85g thick sliced ham (I used leftover spiral cut cooked ham.)

1 3/4 oz or 50g extra sharp cheddar or your favorite aged cheese

For the eyes:

6 raisins or currants

Method

Warm the milk and butter in the microwave or in a small pot on the stove until the butter is melted and the milk is lukewarm to the touch. 

In a mixing bowl, combine the milk with the yeast and sugar and set the mixture aside to prove. Within a few minutes, you should see bubbles forming which assure you that the yeast is indeed active. 

Sift the flour and salt into the bowl, add the egg white and mix well to make a soft dough. 

Knead until your dough is smooth and elastic. Set the bowl in a warm place for the first rise of about 45 minutes till it doubles in size. 

Meanwhile, slice your ham into rounded pieces about 1/4 in or 1/2cm thick and 2 x 2.5 in or 5 x 6.5cm. Cut your cheese into similar size slices and lay one piece of cheese on each slice of ham. I also trimmed the top corners of the cheese off to match the curve of the ham. 

Once your dough has risen sufficiently, cut it into six equal pieces. (My dough weighed about 284g so each piece was about 47g, if you are a user of a digital scale.)

Roll each piece into balls and then roll them into long ovals a little more than twice the length of your ham.

Place the ham and cheese on top of the oval, a little closer to the right to leave room for cutting the trunk. Fold the dough up over the ham and cheese, pressing any air out and sealing the edges all around. 

Use a sharp knife to cut a triangle on the left side to form the trunk and a small slit on the right side for the tail. According to Feng Shui, elephant trunks pointed up indicate a good mood, so I turned mine up! 

Roll the little triangle of dough into a ball then roll it out in a small oval to form the elephant’s ear. Lightly press the ear on to attach it. 

Continue the process until all six ham and cheese elephant rolls are done. Use the end of a chopstick to press an eyehole into each. 

Place them on your baking pan lined with a silicone liner or baking parchment and put them in a warm place to rise for 30 minutes. I’ve discovered that my microwave oven is large enough to hold my pan so I heat a small bowl of water to almost boiling, then pop the pan on top and close the microwave door. Game changer for those of us without proving drawers!

In a small bowl, soak the six currants for the eyes in a little hot water. Leave them to plump. 

Depending on how long your oven takes to preheat, start that process setting the oven to 350°F or 180°C sometime in the 30 minutes of rising time. 

When the little elephants have risen sufficiently, whisk your egg yolk with two tablespoons of water and brush them with the elephants with the mixture. 

Drain the currants and dry them off. Use the end of your chopstick to poke one into each eyehole. 

Bake the elephants in your preheated oven for about 18-20 minutes or until they are puffed and golden. 

Remove from the oven and leave to cool for as long as you can resist before eating.  

Enjoy! 

Check out all of the other animal bread my Bread Bakers are sharing today!

• Beef and Sweet Onion Dim Sum Pandas from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Bird Bread Rolls from Ambrosia
• Easter Bunny Buns from Cook with Renu
• Ham and Cheese Elephant Rolls from Food Lust People Love
• Hedgehog Bread from Making Miracles
• Honey Bear Loaf from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Sourdough Animal-shaped Breads from Zesty South Indian Kitchen
• Matcha Milk Bread Turtles from A Messy Kitchen
• Meyer Lemon Custard-Filled Matcha Turtles from Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Peacock Shaped Pizza Rolls from Magical Ingredients
• Piglet Bread Rolls from Sneha's Recipe
• Turtle Bread from Passion Kneaded

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all our lovely bread by following our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated after each event on the #BreadBakers home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

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Sticky Jammy Hot Wings

Sticky jammy hot wings are sweet and savory and spicy, not to mention finger-licking good! And, even better for you, they are baked, not fried!

I absolutely love chicken wings. They are hands down my favorite part and possibly in my top five favorite things to cook and eat. For all the many years we lived in Dubai, I made my spicy sticky wings every single Friday when the weather was conducive to sailing. Sitting in the shallows of the bright blue Arabian Gulf, we ate wings to our hearts content, threw the bones farther out for the sea creatures and rinsed our sticky fingers in the salty sea. Idyllic. 

Now that we are back in the States, especially since we’ve been stuck home in a small family unit, we haven’t felt much like party wings. But I gotta tell ya, these wings helped lift my mood considerably. Something about the tangy, spicy, sweet glaze made me smile a little. Perhaps they’ll lift your spirits too. 

Sticky Jammy Hot Wings

I used homemade three-berry jam for these delicious wings but you can use your favorite fruit jam or even marmalade. If you warm the jam slightly, it is easier to mix into the glaze. This recipe is adapted from one on Love and Olive Oil.

Ingredients

2 1/2 lbs or 1142g chicken wings (weight without tips – about 12 wings)

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/2 teaspoon cayenne

freshly ground black pepper

For the glaze:

1 garlic clove

1 hot red chili pepper

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

2 teaspoons soy sauce (I used low sodium.)

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/3 cup or 110g jam of your choice

Optional for garnish: chopped cilantro 

Method

If your wings are still in one piece, use a sharp knife to divide them into three pieces. Put the wing tips in a bag and freeze them to use later when making chicken stock. I happened to buy mine in Costco where they were already separated and someone else somewhere kept the tips. I hope they did something useful with them.  

Preheat oven to 425°F or 218°C. For easier clean up, you might want to line your pan with aluminum foil or a silicone liner.

In a large bowl, put the wing pieces in a single layer. Drizzle on the olive oil, then sprinkle on the sea salt and cayenne. Give them all few generous grinds of black pepper. 

Use a wooden spoon or spatula to toss the wings to distribute the seasonings and oil to all sides of the chicken. 

Bake the pieces for 40 minutes on the middle rack of your preheated oven, turning them over once halfway through cooking, until the wings are golden brown.

Meanwhile to prepare glaze, mince the garlic and chili pepper. 

Put them both in a small bowl with the rice vinegar and set aside for about 10 minutes. This helps mellow the sharpness of the garlic somewhat. Next add in the soy sauce, olive oil and the jam. If the jam is fairly stiff, warm the whole bowl in the microwave for about 10-15 seconds then stir well to combine. 

Pour any chicken grease out of the baking pan and discard. Put the wings in a clean bowl, again single file. Spoon the glaze on to distribute it evenly.

Use a spatula or wooden spoon to toss the wings to coat them with the glaze. 

Put the chicken back in the baking pan and spoon any glaze left in the bowl on top of the pieces. 

Turn your oven to broil. Return the pan to the oven, still on the middle rack. 

Broil the wings for about 5 minutes or until the glaze has started to bubble and caramelize. Do not walk away from the oven as they can burn really quickly if you aren’t watchful. 

Garnish with some chopped cilantro, if desired. 

Enjoy! 

This month my Baking Blogger friends are sharing recipes using jam and preserves. Check them all out below. Many thanks to our leader and host, Sue of Palatable Pastime. 

• Blackberry Crumble Bars from Cookaholic Wife
• Chicken Legs With Strawberry Balsamic Glaze & Spicy Potato Wedges from Sneha's Recipe
• Chicken Thighs in Raspberry Sauce from Making Miracles
• Jalapeño Lime Glazed Chicken from Palatable Pastime
• Jam Pinwheel Cookies from Magical Ingredients
• Jelly Glazed Wings from Sid's Sea Palm Cooking
• Orange Marmalade Cinnamon Streusel Muffins from Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck Survive Despite a Whiskered Accomplice
• Pepper Jelly Glazed Chicken Breasts from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Roasted Lamb with Bourbon-Plum Glaze from Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Shortbread Jam Cookies with a Streusel Topping from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Sticky Jammy Hot Wings from Food Lust People Love

Baking Bloggers is a friendly group of food bloggers who vote on a shared theme and then post recipes to fit that theme one the second Monday of each month. If you are a food blogger interested in joining in, inquire at our Baking Bloggers Facebook group. We'd be honored if you would join us in our baking adventures.

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