Shrimp Creole @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: I used to make shrimp creole often, especially for dinner guests, but for some reason it fell off my rotation. Then I spotted this recipe and thought I’d like to try again, especially since Key West is famous for pink shrimp. I tried it a second time using frozen gulf shrimp, which turned out fine. I also increased the celery and adjusted some of the spices to our liking. (Half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper makes the dish pretty hot!)

Ingredients

4 Tablespoons butter or olive oil

1 large onion, diced

2 ribs celery, diced

1 green or red bell pepper, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

½ teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

½ teaspoon black or white pepper

1/4 to ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 Tablespoon flour

1/3 cup dry white or red wine 

1 15 oz can diced tomatoes 

1 cup chicken or vegetable stock

2 bay leaves

Hot pepper sauce, to taste

1.5 lb large uncooked shrimp , (about 32)

4 cups hot cooked rice, for serving

Saute the celery, pepper, and onions in the butter or oil until soft. Add the garlic and sauté another minute or so. Mix together the flour and spices and add this to the pan to cook for several minutes. Stir in the wine, tomatoes, bay leaves, and stock, and simmer until well-combined and slightly thick. 

At this point you can refrigerate the sauce to use the next day. Or add the shrimp and simmer until they turn pink. Serve this over rice, with a green vegetable such as peas on the side.

Lucy Burdette writes the Key West food critic mysteries. A DISH TO DIE FOR has been awarded the Florida Book Awards bronze medal for popular fiction! A CLUE IN THE CRUMBS (#13 in the series) is now available for pre-order...

Roasted Shrimp in BBQ Butter Sauce @LucyBurdette #giveaway

LUCY BURDETTE: Today was intended to be a guest day on MLK, but there was a snafu in my guest's cover etc being ready. So you'll meet Christine Falcone in a few weeks when she's not feeling frazzled and rushed, and today you get me! 

I do have giveaways--a CD copy of A DISH TO DIE FOR, plus a copy of the 1988 Woman's Club Cookbook, which is part of the new book's story!

When I was studying clinical psychology in graduate school, sometimes my friends and I would cook delicious meals to celebrate our work and blow off steam. This baked shrimp dish is one we loved. When I was thinking about what my food critic character Hayley Snow might serve to to beloved Scottish sisters Violet and Bettina in next summer's release, A CLUE IN THE CRUMBS, this dish came to mind. Hayley always considers the tastes of her guests and likes to connect recipes to her beloved Key West island. Here she is mulling things over:

I’d considered a million recipes preparing for their visit. Key West pink shrimp was a no-brainer, but in what form? Miss Gloria nixed a few ideas as too spicy and possibly foreign sounding, particularly the shrimp in purgatory recipe that I favored. 

“I don’t remember eating anything spicy in Scotland,” she’d said. “Certainly not something that’s traveled that close to hell.” We both giggled.

In the end, we’d agreed on garlicky, buttery, Worcestershire-laced baked shrimp with lots of good bread from Old Town Bakery to sop up the sauce. I’d made it for friends and served with the shells on for a more rustic, hands-on experience, but for our special and jet-lagged guests, I’d decided to peel.

Ingredients

1 teaspoon paprika

2 pounds extra large or jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined, thawed if frozen

8 tablespoons unsalted butter

1-3 large cloves garlic, minced

2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

Hot sauce or hot peppers, to taste

1 lemon, sliced

1 bay leaf

Fresh rosemary, leaves snipped off stems

Good bread for serving

Mix all the ingredients together except shrimp and lemon in a 9 x 13 pan. Heat in 400 degree oven until melted.

Remove from the oven, stir, add the shrimp and lemon in a single layer. Roast for about 15 minutes until butter is bubbly and shrimp are pink. Serve with good bread for soaking up the sauce.You’ll probably want a nice green salad to balance the richness of the shrimp!

Be sure to leave a comment about a favorite recipe that's held up over the years to be entered in the drawing for the two books!

A DISH TO DIE FOR, #12 in the Key West food critic mystery series, is now available wherever books are sold

About A Dish to Die For:

Peace and quiet are hard to find in bustling Key West, so Hayley Snow, food critic for Key Zest magazine, is taking the afternoon off for a tranquil lunch with a friend outside of town. As they are enjoying the wild beach and the lunch, she realizes that her husband Nathan’s dog, Ziggy, has disappeared. She follows his barking, to find him furiously digging at a shallow grave with a man’s body in it. Davis Jager, a local birdwatcher, identifies him as GG Garcia, a rabble-rousing Key West local and developer. Garcia was famous for over-development on the fragile Keys, womanizing, and refusing to follow city rules—so it’s no wonder he had a few enemies.

 When Davis is attacked in the parking lot of a local restaurant after talking to Hayley and her dear friend, the octogenarian Miss Gloria, Hayley is slowly but surely drawn into the case. Hayley’s mother, Janet, has been hired to cater GG’s memorial service reception at the local Woman’s Club, using recipes from their vintage Key West cookbook—and Hayley and Miss Gloria sign on to work with her, hoping to cook up some clues by observing the mourners.

But the real clues appear when Hayley begins to study the old cookbook, as whispers of old secrets come to life, dragging the past into the present—with murderous results.

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Pink Shrimp and Hominy Stew a la Rancho Gordo @LucyBurdette #recipe

Lucy Burdette: I have a new food obsession and it's called Rancho Gordo beans! at my request, John gave me a cookbook and a box of specialty beans from this source. Then I saw a recipe for shrimp and hominy stew, and had to order the dried hominy and special paprika. We got a little panicky as the broth was cooking because this paprika has a very strong smell. In the end--delicious!

I cut the thyme to ½ tsp, and paprika to 2.5 Tbsp, used 1.5 cups bean liquid and the rest chicken stock. Also I added cilantro instead of parsley, and squeezed a wedge of lemon into each bowl on the way to the table.

4 stalks celery, sliced thin

1 yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon dried thyme
3 tablespoons Rancho Gordo/Burlap & Barrel Smoked Spanish Paprika
3 cups cooked Rancho Gordo Prepared Hominy/Posole
4-5 cups liquid (Hominy cooking water, bean broth, vegetable or chicken broth or any combination of these)
Cilantro, chopped
1 pound raw Key West pink shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 lemon for juice

The only tiresome part of this recipe is rehydrating the hominy—you should start a day ahead as with dried beans. But it’s so much better and so much less sodium than canned hominy, that it’s worth the effort. One cup of dried hominy made enough for the stew. Soak the dried hominy overnight, drain the water. Cover this in a medium pot with at least two inches of fresh water. Simmer two or more hours until tender.

Saute the celery, onion, and garlic in the olive oil in a stockpot over medium heat for about 10-15 minutes, until soft. 

Add the oregano, paprika, and thyme. Stir and continue cooking for a few minutes until a thick paste is formed.

Slowly add the liquid while stirring constantly. Start with 4 cups and add more later if you prefer it soupier. Allow it to warm through, about 5 minutes or so. Add the hominy. Once the soup is warm and you’re about ready to serve, add the shrimp and cook through; about 5 minutes. Add the last cup of liquid if it seems too thick for your taste.

Squeeze a wedge of lemon into each bowl and sprinkle with parsley. 

Death on the Menu, the 8th Key West food critic mystery, is available now from Crooked Lane Books. You can order it wherever books are sold! A DEADLY FEAST will be out in May, but can be pre-ordered now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indiebound, or wherever you buy your books.

And T-bone says please follow Lucy on Instagram and Bookbub!

Hayley Snow's Easy Shrimp Salad #recipe @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: One of the great joys of writing the Key West mysteries is imagining what the characters would really do, and that includes what they would really eat. They are characters in a book, but they honestly begin to feel like real people. I can picture Hayley Snow and Miss Gloria on their houseboat wondering what to have for dinner. And then I can imagine them remembering that--oh joy!--there are shrimp left over from the night before.

Then Hayley goes to work. She looks in the fridge again and finds celery and onions and capers. And Miss Gloria goes out to the back deck and picks some fresh dill and a few beautiful ripe tomatoes. And then they whip up a quick but delicious shrimp salad served over greens and sliced tomatoes, with maybe a delicious leek biscuit on the side. Can't you just see it? And my husband says, where did this recipe come from? And I say...Hayley made it, of course...

Ingredients

1/2 pound Key West or Stonington pink shrimp
1 small, mild onion, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1 tablespoon capers
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill

Boil the shrimp until just pink. Drain, then shell and clean out the vein. Cut these into bite-sized pieces. Add the onion, celery, capers, and dill, then mix the mayonnaise in. Serve over crisp salad greens or a sliced tomato.

 




FATAL RESERVATIONS is on bookshelves now! And you can follow Lucy on Facebook,  

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Key West Boiled #Dinner #Recipe @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: One of the nice things about living in Key West is that good friends visit us, escaping from the dreariness of winter. We spent Valentine's Day with our friends Jane and Jack Novick, and it was lovely to remember how we all met, and what kind of food we made for each other's wedding receptions!

Of course we did go out one night, but we cooked in too. We wanted something not too fussy, but utterly delicious. I remembered a dish that Jane made for us some years ago, and we adapted it for this occasion. It's delish, but very little trouble! (It would be even better with fresh corn on the cob, but the frozen was not bad...and I promise I will make something besides shrimp next week.)

Ingredients for Key West Boiled Dinner

• 1 lemon, quartered
• 5 tablespoons Creole seasoning (like Tony Chachere's)
• 2-3 bay leaves
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled but left whole
• 1/2 to 1 pound fingerling potatoes (we used multicolored)
• 1 package sausage of your choice, cut into 2-3 inch lengths
• 1 package frozen corn on the cob
• 1 1/2 pounds large Key West pink shrimp in shell

Bring a gallon of water to boil in a big pot. Squeeze the lemon into this, and drop in the lemon pieces, the garlic, the bay leaves, and the Creole seasoning. 

Simmer this together for a few minutes.

Meanwhile, wash the potatoes and rinse the shrimp. Add the potatoes to the water, simmer until almost soft. (About 10 minutes, depending on the size.) Add the sausage and corn, simmer a few minutes. Finally, add the shrimp, simmer until they turn quite pink--another 2-3 minutes. 



Dump the whole pot into a colander, drain, and serve on a large platter. 

Serve cocktail sauce (2/3 ketchup to 1/3 horseradish) and Dijon mustard on the side, along with a green salad.  








Everyone takes as much as they want and peels their own shrimp as they go. 





Until you are left with...this!

Hang in there northerners--that horrible winter will pass! And July will come soon too, bringing the sixth Key West food critic mystery, FINAL RESERVATIONS. You can pre-order it here.

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Shrimp Creole #Recipe @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: Because the Key West pink shrimp are so outstanding down here, I am always looking for a chance to use them. Years ago, I used to make a version of shrimp creole, but that recipe is long gone. Here's a version that is not too time-consuming, can be made ahead, and serves 6-8 dinner guests happily. Or six, with leftovers for the next day.

Ingredients:

2 pounds large shrimp, peeled and deveined (we figured on about 6 per person)

1- 16 oz. can chopped tomatoes
1 32 oz can crushed tomatoes in sauce
2 medium onions, chopped
2 bell peppers, chopped (or 3 small as I used)
3 stalks celery, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
2 bay leaves
Salt & pepper
2-3 tsp Tony Chachere’s Creole seasoning
1 tsp. sugar
1 cup chicken stock 
3 tbsp. flour
4 tbsp. oil

Cooked white rice

In a large pot, heat the flour and oil and stir over low heat for 10-15 minutes. (This is called a roux--be patient and make sure you don't burn it or the dish will be  ruined.)

Add the onions and sauté for about 10 minutes. Add the bell pepper, celery, and creole seasoning and sauté for another 15 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes, garlic and bay leaves and simmer for 30 - 40 minutes, stirring frequently. 

Add the stock and sugar; bring to a boil stirring frequently. Reduce the heat to med-low, and simmer for another 20 minutes, continuing to stir.


Just before you are ready to serve, add the shrimp and simmer for about 2 to 5 minutes stirring frequently. The shrimp should be bright pink but not rubbery. 

 

Serve over rice with a green vegetable or salad.

As with most soups and stews, it helps the flavors to deepen if you make the sauce a day ahead and let it sit in the refrigerator. (Or even the morning you'll serve it.)

 
 (That is my brother-in-law's gorgeous home-grown bok choi on the side.)


And this is what I served for dessert: best ever Southern Caramel Cake. Mmmmmm.....

Lucy writes the Key West food critic mysteries:

 DEATH WITH ALL THE TRIMMINGS is here now!

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