Saviolo
Saviolo's JournalCajun-style Shrimp Etouffee Recipe (video)
Back to the Cajun food this week! Étouffée is French for "smothered" and these shrimp are smothered in a rich brown roux-thickened gravy made with shrimp stock and butter. This recipe is also sometimes made with diced tomatoes, but apparently that makes it Creole instead of Cajun.
The trick of making a darker roux is two-fold. Firstly, you will want to use a bit more flour than you normally would, because as the roux darkens the oil will come out a little bit, and the flour will slightly lose some thickening power. We're not aiming at a dark roux for this one (as we did for the gumbo video we did), but we're looking for a roughly peanut-butter colour of brown. Second, you want to watch it pretty closely, because it can scorch very quickly. Keep it moving in the pan, and keep an eye on it so that it cooks evenly and doesn't burn.
Homemade Fried Mozzarella Sticks and Homemade Ranch Dip Recipe (video)
Some classic pub food for St. Patrick's Day! The mozzarella sticks aren't really the main event in this recipe, they're dead simple. Breading and frying single-serving mozza snacking cheese until they're melty is the easy part. The homemade ranch dip is really the star of the show, here. I was honestly pretty amazed at this recipe. It was like regular ranch, but everything was turned up to 11. Really bright flavours, and extremely versatile. We obviously used it with the mozza sticks, but it also went really well on fried chicken the next day, and would make an excellent pizza dipping sauce, too.
The recipes we adapted this from used sour cream along with the mayonnaise, but we went ahead and used our own homemade creme fraiche, which was delicious. Sour cream will work just fine if you don't want to go through the process of making your own creme fraiche, though.
Homemade Frybread Apple Fritters Recipe (video)
We based these fritters on a similar dough to the Navajo frybread we did a couple of weeks ago, but with a couple of alterations. We added some sugar and yeast to the dough, and gave it a little bit of proofing time, and just enough kneading to incorporate the apples, which makes a little more gluten development in the final product. These came out delightfully crispy on the outside and very fluffy on the inside. We were partially inspired by Chef John (from foodwishes.com) and his method of cooking the apples a bit first in brown butter before adding them to the dough.
This video is interesting, it sort of shows what not to do in some ways. We tried adding the apples after the dough was ready, but it was only later that hubby realized that we should have added the apples at the same time as we added the milk to help incorporate them better and easier. We managed to get it done, but it would have been easier if we'd done it differently!
Black Bean and Squash Soup Recipe (video)
A couple of weeks ago we made that amazing Three Sisters salad, but it left us with a bunch of leftover black beans and roasted squash. No worries! This week we're turning it into soup! No, we started these beans from dry and raw, soaked them, then boiled them ourselves. As you can see in this recipe, we also used the liquid from the beans. If you prefer to use canned beans, we recommend you rinse them when they come out of the can, and then you can replace the bean water (aquafaba) with some stock or water.
There are lots of variations we can use for this recipe. If you don't want to burr mix it and leave it chunky, you may want to use diced canned tomatoes instead of whole. Also, if you want it to be super smooth, you may need to push it through a strainer to get rid of little bits of bean skin. We loved the texture as it was, nice and smooth, but still with a little bit of texture. Also, this recipe is vegan, but we found that a little bit of crumbled feta on top was extremely delicious. Also, if you sweat the aromatics in something like bacon grease, of course it will cease to be vegan or even vegetarian!
Navajo Frybread Recipe
This week's recipe is descended from an Indigenous recipe that arose during The Long Walk. The Navajo people had to make use of what they could while they were short on supplies, so this recipe would have more traditionally been made with powdered milk and not fresh. This is a super simple and tender frybread that requires very little work. In fact, if should not be kneaded at all, and just formed once the ingredients come together.
As with all things fried, you need to make sure that your oil is hot enough. If your oil is not hot enough, it will soak into the dough and make the frybread greasy. The final result of this recipe is extremely tender, and doesn't really fold well, but it does make a delicious sort of taco with the Three Sisters salad from last week. For a bit of extra pop, add a little bit of crumbled feta on top!
Three Sisters Salad recipe - Vegan! (video)
The Three Sisters are three crops that were co-planted by Indigenous communities before Europeans came to North America. The three crops are beans, squash, and corn. They were frequently co-planted because they help each other grow in a symbiotic way. Most of the actual Indigenous recipes using the Three Sisters have been lost, but there are many ways to use them together that are delicious and extremely nutritious. We add pecans to this recipe as well, as they were more common amongst groups further south in North America.
This recipe is vegan, but we found that a little crumble of feta cheese on top really made it pop. Of course it's not extremely traditional once we get into adding olive oil and lemon juice, but the main ingredients, the squash, corn, and beans are very traditional. The squash was more likely to be something like a zucchini at the time, but any number of different squash would be a great add to this dish.
Homemade Falafel Recipe (video)
Not gonna lie, I was pretty surprised to find out how easy it is to make really excellent falafel at home. You definitely need a food processor or food mill, but the deep fryer is not required, you can fry these in oil in a dutch oven, as well. Hubby adapted this recipe from a few different ones he looked at, and then scaled it down. Most of the ones we found were for restaurant quantities (starting with 2lbs of dried chickpeas instead of one cup!) so we brought it down to home kitchen quantities.
You definitely want to start with dried chickpeas soaked overnight, and not canned. The texture of the canned ones will be a bit stodgy in your final product, so go the extra mile and soak those dried peas overnight. Also, change the water out a couple of times while they're soaking. You can also add a 1/2 tsp of baking soda to the water which will help soften the hulls and discourage microbial growth while they're softening.
Homemade Shrimp Boil Recipe (video)
This week we got back to some good ol' simple and hearty shrimp boil! Now, this recipe can be used for lots of different kinds of seafood, like shrimp, crab, or crawfish. All of the different elements cook at slightly different times, so you just need to be a little bit careful about when you add each of the individual parts of the recipe. The potatoes take the longest, followed by the sausage and the corn, and then the shrimp goes in at the end for the shortest time.
We served this by putting the whole pot onto the table and using tongs to pull out the potatoes, corn, sausage, and shrimp, but if you want to do it a little more rustic, you can strain the liquid out, cover your table with plastic and newspaper, and dump all the tasty stuff in the middle of the table, and just toss the shrimp shells onto the paper! Makes it easy to clean up afterwards, just wrap up everything in the paper and throw it away!
Homemade Hushpuppies Recipe (video)
We got a deep fryer for Christmas, so we wanted to try it out, finally! We made some hushpuppies to go along with next week's video, which will be a big ol' shrimp boil. This is a simple and delicious recipe, and you certainly don't need a deep fryer to do it. You can easily deep fry these in a dutch oven or whatever you usually use to deep fry. Deep fryer just makes things a little easier and can cut down on splatter.
We added a little too much liquid to ours, and it came out a little loose, but it's a very forgiving recipe. If it's too wet it might spread a bit more in the oil, but as you can see, even our fairly loose batter stuck together well and puffed up nicely as it cooked. They were delightfully light and fluffy inside and crisp and delicious on the outside.
Also, sorry for not labeling my video posts and wasting everyone's time.
Simple Delicious Deviled Eggs Recipe
Super old school this week! Sure, deviled eggs have a bit of a reputation for being at kitschy old fashioned cocktail parties in the 50's and 60's, but to be honest, they're always a crowd pleaser, and they're delicious. You really want to try to get all of your ingredients chopped as finely as possible to make sure the filling is pretty smooth, but it is nice to have a little bit of crunch from, say, bits of pickle. The smoother it is, the easier it is to pipe into your eggs, as well.
This is one of those recipes that has a million different variations. This one uses mostly cream cheese instead of mayo, which gives it this lovely rich texture and makes the filling a little stiffer, which helps it hold its shape better. If you don't have a piping bag with a star tip, it's very easy to use a ziplock bag with a corner cut off, or a cone of parchment with the tip cut off.
Profile Information
Gender: MaleHometown: Ottawa, Ontario
Home country: Canada
Current location: Toronto, Ontario
Member since: Wed Oct 29, 2008, 04:34 PM
Number of posts: 3,284
