Shrimp Etoufée

Living in Louisiana comes with certain culinary expectations: you begin using crawfish in many of your dishes, you learn how to make a roux, you invest time and money in learning how to fry a turkey, prepare a crawfish boil, and the list goes on and on....

Sunday night, John and Mike (and Joe!) joined me for the True Blood premiere.  Those of you familiar with the show know that it's set in "Bon Temps," Louisiana, a small town in backwoods LA where the residents embody a certain southern stereotype and fornicate with vampires, maenads, and well...fairies.   Seeing as John is an extraordinarily well-recognized vampire specialist (check him out at Amazon here), it only seemed right to drink "bloody red wine" and prepare a very Louisiana dish: etouffée.  Now, I had originally planned on making crawfish etouffée, but the Neighborhood Walmart by my house was out, so I picked up pre-cooked shrimp instead (a result of the oil spill in the Gulf, maybe?).  Prepare with either shrimp, or crawfish, but crawfish tails add a little extra "Louisiana" to the dish.

What we prepared was creamy, spicy, and oh-so-Louisiana.  Make this dish with freshly chopped ingredients, prepare a roux, and allow everything to simmer in Cajun spices.  You will have a dish that's spicy (bot not too spicy) and clearly delicious.

Shrimp Etouffée
This dish is a combination of Emeril Lagasse's and Paula Deen's shrimp etouffée with a couple of tweaks (find the originals here and here).  I didn't use quite the quantity of ingredients Emeril's calls for, but used Paula's instead.  Yet, I used Emeril's overall technique and call for butter for the roux (Paula calls for oil, that crazy lady).  When in doubt, see Emeril for how to cook Louisiana, but see Paula for quantity sizing.


Ingredients:
* 1 cup celery, chopped
* 1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
* 1/2 green bell pepper, chopped

* 4 garlic cloves, minced
* 1/2 cup parsley, finely chopped
* 1 stick + 3 tablespoons butter
* 1 tomato, diced
* 1 cup onions, chopped
* 1/2 cup flour
* 1 tsp pepper
* 1 tsp cayenne
* 2-3 tsps Cajun Seasoning, to taste (i.e., Tony's)
* 2 lbs shrimp, deveined and de-tailed
* 4-5 cups water

Other Accompanying Dish:
* Prepare 6-7 servings white, or brown rice.  (Note: I use a handy-dandy, rice cooker.  I'll have to wait for water to boil again!)


1.) First, do your prep-work by measuring out all of your ingredients--celery, tomato, onion, peppers, flour, parsley, and spices.

2.) Then remove the tails from your thawed, pre-cooked shrimp.

3.) Now, you're ready to make the roux.  Begin by melting one stick of butter + 3 tablespoons butter in a saucepan.  Note: cut butter into 1 inch cubes in order to melt faster.

4.) After butter is fully melted and has coated the pan, add 1/2 cup flour slowly: flour should be mixed in a little at a time to integrate properly and prevent lumping. This process creates what we call a "roux."

5.) Now, add your onions and celery.  Sauté for about five minutes, or until tender, but with a little bit of crunch.

6.) Once celery and onions are tender-but-crunchy, add your bell peppers and tomato and mix in.  Allow to cook for 1 minute.

7.) Once mixed properly, add garlic, parsley, and spices.  Mix and add 2 1/2 cups water.  Mix to create a creamy roux.

8.) Now, this final step is probably the trickiest, because it requires that you know what you're doing.  Anyone who has had etouffée before knows exactly what the sauce/roux should look and taste like.  Those of you new to making this dish will need to follow this rule of thumb: add 2 more cups of water and allow to simmer for a couple of minutes.  The broth should be thick and creamy and not too watery.  Add the shrimp and allow to cook for another couple of minutes and for spices to integrate.  TASTE and adjust spices accordingly.  If, however, at any point during this final step, the sauce begins to get thick and gloppy, or thick and sticky, add more water.  The consistency you're looking for here is "creamy."  The roux's flour + water + butter ratio is want to make a thicker sauce naturally (it's similar to making a batter), but it's your job to add enough water to keep the sauce from clumping, or globbing up.

9.) Now, remove from heat and serve over rice as this dish is clearly delicious.

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Beef Wellington

A couple of Fridays ago, I got it into my head that I was going to make Beef Wellington.  I didn't really know what Beef Wellington was, but I did know that it had beef in it...and pastry.  So, with fellow foodie Alexander at my side, we made two stops--one to the local grocery where I do all of my shopping, and one to Whole Foods for a beautiful cut of 3.5 lbs of beef tenderloin. What ensued was a a brilliantly flavorful--ableit pricey--dinner of the sweetest, tenderest beef I have ever had with a flaky, light pastry casing.  But before these two essential ingredients come together, you must smother it with a mushroom puree and Dijon mustard, then wrap it in ham and finally, wrap it puff pastry.  The final baked item is juicy, richly flavorful, and clearly delicious.




Beef Wellington
This recipes comes--as usual--by way of Elise Bauer over at Simply Recipes (you can find it here).  Elise's recipe calls for 1lb beef tenderloin whereas the one below calls for 3.5 lbs.  I highly suggest making this dish on a smaller scale the first time you make it--one, so that you don't sabotage a fantastic roast with dreams of grandiosity, and two, because this tenderloin is...well...very pricey. 

Ingredients:
* 3.5 lbs. beef tenderloin
* 2 sheets pre-made puff pastry (Pepperidge Farm has a FANTASTIC box of 2 puff pastry available in your local grocer's freezer section)
* salt and pepper
* Olive oil
* 2.5 lbs. bella mushrooms
* 10-14 slices ham
* 6-8 tablespoons djon mustard
* 2 egg yolks, beaten

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT:
*Meat Thermometer

1.) Preheat oven to 400F.

2.) Heat 1-2 tablespoons of oil in a saucepan and season your filet with salt and pepper to taste (or "generously" as Elise suggests).  Then, sear fillet on all sides in saucepan until browned.  Elise suggests to NOT move the fillet until it has had time to brown on one side.  Remove from pan and allow to cool and chop mushrooms.

3.) Puree chopped mushrooms in a food processor or heavy duty blender.  Heat saucepan on medium-high heat.  Scrape down food processor's pureed mushrooms into saucepan and cook until mushrooms have not only released their moisture/juices, but also cooked away.  Once the moisture has cooked away from the mushrooms, remove pan from heat and allow to cool.

4.) Prepare the first stage of the Beef Wellington wrap.  Layout a large sheet of plastic wrap and cover with ham so that your slices overlap.  Spread mushroom over the ham slices and beef fillet on top of these two layers.  Pause to spread djon mustard fully over the entire fillet.  Then, roll the ham and mushrooms over the fillet and use the plastic wrap layer to tightly seal your rolled ham-mushroom-fillet bundle.  Ensure that your plastic wrap is tight by using rubber bands to secure the ends, and refrigerate for 20 minutes.  Remove puff pastries from the freezer/fridge and allow to defrost for these 20-30 minutes.

5.) On a clean surface, spread open your two sheets of puff pastry in a surface that is large enough to cover your fillet.  If you're cooking a 1 lb fillet, you may only need one sheet of pastry.  However, if you're making 3.5 lbs (like this recipe), you'll need to lay out both sides of pastry side by side and combine the two at their edges.

6.) Unwrap beef fillet and place in the center of your pastry dough.  Beat 2 eggs and use a silicone brush to brush all around the edges of the pastry dough with this egg mixture.  Fold pastry around the beef fillet and cut off excess pastry.  NOTE: Elise notes that pastry that is more than 2 layers thick will not cook all of the way and remain doughy.  Thus, don't go crazy on the pastry here; one layer is enough.

7.) Place on baking sheet and flip pastry covered fillet to SEAM SIDE DOWN.  Brush the top layer with your egg mixture and score incisions into the top of the pastry dough, but do not go all the way through the pastry.

8.) Bake for 25-35 minutes.  Pastry should be golden brown when removed from oven and meat temperature (yes, you should invest in a meat thermometer!) should be 125-130F for medium-rare.

9.) Remove from oven and allow roast to rest for 10 minutes.  Cut into 1 inch slices (I prefer on a diagonal) and enjoy!

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Dinner Party Impossible!

For over a week, I have been too busy to post recipes to Clearly Delicious due to massive amounts of school work, life, and the like.  However, while in this interim of cooking and busy business, I thought I'd give a photographic preview of an upcoming post: Beef Wellington.  These photos were taken Friday night at a dinner party at my house, and the food was as good as the quality of these pictures.  Major thanks to Jeramey Jones for his camera and amazing photographs! Although many Clearly Delicious readers will recognize food blog model Joe Gregory, please say hello to two new foodies on Clearly Delicious: Alexander and Pete (Alexander is the red head, and Pete is the very enthusiastic gentleman in one of the closeup photos).

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