Southern Classic: Shrimp & Grits

With the Mrs. home on maternity leave/summer break (she is a teacher), I've been spoiled a bit by coming home to a lot of dinners on the table. That means I haven't had a chance to do a lot of cooking myself, but today, I was back it.

If you've ever spent time in the South, you may have tried to the classic dish Shrimp & Grits. It is an incredibly delicious and versatile dish that can be enjoyed at any meal. We make it for Sunday dinners from time to time, but I guess traditionally it's a breakfast/brunch dish. Believe me, though, it's good  any time.

I found the basis for this recipe doing a search for "easy shrimp and grits" and finding a recipe on
"Southern Living" magazine's website from a restaurant in Chapel Hill, NC. I've adapted it just a little, by using a Vidalia (read: sweet) onion instead of green onions, as I normally have one on hand and like to think it adds a little more traditional southern flavor to the dish. I also use olive oil (again, I have it and like it), and use whatever shredded cheese that moves me for the cheese grits (tonight I used some Cheddar Jack and an Italian blend.

Now before we get down to the recipe, a very important piece of advice. You need to make this dish like you're on a TV cooking show. In other words, have everything measured out and ready to go. This is not a hard recipe, but it all happens quickly, and it's two dishes in one that must be cooked at the same time. I'll try to give you the timing as we go.

Ingredients
2-4 bacon slices
1 pound peeled, cleaned medium shrimp
Salt & pepper
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1 tablespoon olive oil (or just keep all the bacon drippings)
1/2 cup chopped Vidalia (sweet) onion
1 cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Hot sauce to taste

Cheese Grits
14 oz chicken broth
1 cup skim milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup quick cook grits
1 cup shredded cheese of your choice (the original recipe calls for 3/4 cup sharp Cheddar and 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan)
Hot sauce to taste
1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper


Cook the bacon in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat until crisp. Remove bacon, and drain on paper towels. Crumble bacon and set aside. Reserve 1 tablespoon drippings in skillet.

When the bacon is almost done, in a medium saucepan, combine 14 oz chicken broth, skim milk and 1/2 teaspoon salt and bring to boil over medium-high heat. Gradually whisk in grits. Lower heat and simmer for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Back in the skillet, sauté mushrooms in hot drippings with oil for 5 minutes or until tender. Add onions, and sauté 2 minutes.

As veggies cook, sprinkle some salt and pepper on the shrimp and dredge in flour. Add shrimp and garlic, and sauté 2 minutes or until shrimp are lightly browned. Stir in chicken broth, lemon juice, and hot sauce, and cook 2 more minutes, stirring to loosen particles from bottom of skillet.

Back to the grits: Stir in cheese, white pepper and hot sauce.

Spoon shrimp mixture over hot Cheese Grits; sprinkle with crumbled bacon.

It may not look like the prettiest dish in this photo, but it's delicious! My wife says it's as good as any version she's had in a restaurant. I served it with warm French bread. Also, as different people have different tastes, I like to add more hot sauce to my personal plate, but you do need a little while cooking for the flavor.

If you're making this for breakfast or brunch, serve it along with scrambled eggs and biscuits. Leftovers also go nicely with some eggs for breakfast. Enjoy!

Just in time for summer: Fall-off-the-Bone Ribs

The unofficial start of summer has arrived, and that means grilling season. Every dad wants to be a master griller, but let's be honest: It's not always as easy as we'd like. I, for one, often have trouble knowing when meats are cooked properly, which really frustrates me.

By the way, when we moved from Pennsylvania to South Carolina when I was a kid, my family learned an important lesson. Up north, barbecue is a verb, as in, "Let's barbecue this afternoon," or gerund, as in, "We're going to have a barbecue." In the south, it's a noun, as in, "We're having barbecue for dinner."

Anyway... while I am yet to master steaks or even burgers, I have learned a recipe for ribs that is always sure to impress. Before we start, though, I will tell you that rib experts/snobs will probably tell you that this is not the real way to cook ribs, because apparently if a rib falls off the bone, it's been steamed, instead of smoked. A rib, they'll tell you, should be chewy and require some work with your teeth. Well, if this recipe is wrong, I don't want to be right! That's how good it is.

So how did I discover this? Simple. I Googled "easy ribs" or something like that, and found a recipe for dry-rubbed ribs that is easy and delicious. Through a little experimentation, I have tweaked it a little and guarantee success.

So here's what you'll need:

2 racks of pork ribs (whatever kind you want will work)
Your favorite BBQ sauce if desired.

For the rub:
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 teaspoon cayenne
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
The juice of half a lime (or the whole lime, if you'd like!)

Rinse the ribs with cold water and pat dry with a paper towel. Lay each rack on its own long sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil. You MUST use heavy duty foil for this. The regular stuff tears way too easily.

Mix all the rub ingredients together in a small bowl until it forms a gritty paste. Rub it all over both sides of each rack until they are coated evenly. Don't forget the sides! The rub is pretty spicy, but it will mellow as it cooks.

Fold up the foil for a tight seal. You may need to an extra piece to cover any seams, and you may need more later if it starts to leak and cause flare-ups on the grill. Let the ribs chill in the refrigerator for as long as possible. The longer the better, as the meat really soaks up the flavor, so if you can leave it overnight, great, but I've done it for about an hour, and it's still fine.

Heat your gas grill to 300, and put the wrapped ribs right on the grate. Cook for about 2.5 hours. Remember, when you're barbecuing, low and slow is the key. After about 2.5 hour, use a sharp knife, and cut open the foil.

Brush on your favorite BBQ sauce on the meaty side if you want, and carefully flip the ribs onto the grate. Brush the backside with the sauce and let cook for another 5 or 10 minutes or so per side until the sauce caramelizes and forms a nice, sticky crust.

 

Look closely at the picture above, and you can see where some of the meat tore away while flipping. That's how tender these ribs are.

Usually two racks is more than enough for four people. Be careful as you move them from the grill to a platter and to a plate. They can be so tender that they will fall apart as you transfer them.

It's Greek to me: Souvlaki & Greek Potatoes

Sorry the blog has been so quiet lately. As you might imagine, with our new addition, there's little time for things like this. Plus, we've had some great friends who have spoiled us with meals, so there hasn't been a whole lot of cooking. Nevertheless, I have a couple more recipes ready to go, including this one.

It's Greek Festival weekend in Wilmington, but with a couple of little kids, we decided not to try to navigate the event and make our own Greek dinner. The idea is inspired by my favorite dish at a great restaurant back home in South Carolina: Zorba's. Anyone who has grown up in or around Irmo knows Zorba's, and the Souvlaki Platter there has long been my standard order. You can serve this up with beef or chicken. We made chicken last night, so that's what you'll see in this recipe.

Ingredients

Chicken breasts and/or beef tips/steak (really any cut will do)
Greek/Souvlaki seasoning (I use Cavender's Greek Seasoning)
Olive oil
Balsamic or red wine vinegar
Potatoes
Stewed tomatoes
Oregano
Basil
Mint
Tzatziki sauce (recipe below)
Pita bread

For Souvlaki
Cut meat into bite-sized pieces. In zip top bag combine about 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup vinegar, Souvlaki seasoning (at least a couple tablespoons) and mix together. Add meat, a spring of fresh mint, fresh basil and oregano and marinate at least 30 minutes. Place on hot grill (I use my George Foreman Grill), sprinkle with more seasoning if desired and cook until done.

For potatoes
Cut peeled potatoes in half. In medium pot, cover with cold, salted water and bring to a boil. Boil for four minutes. Remove most of the water and add in a can of stewed tomatoes, some oregano, mint, basil and Greek seasoning. Bring to a boil. Cover and simmer until fork tender.

Tzatziki Sauce

 

2 cups Plain yogurt (Greek yogurt is even better)

1 Cucumber

2 cloves garlic chopped

1 tbsp olive oil
Pinch of salt
1 tsp chopped fresh mint
1 tsp chopped fresh oregano

Peel cucumber. Cut in half and scoop out seeds with a spoon.

Chop cucumber as finely as possible. Place chopped cucumber on thick layer of paper towels and squeeze out as much liquid as possible. Mix in small bowl with rest of the ingredients. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Serve Souvlaki and potatoes with sauce and warm pita.

I also made a side of spinach by heating a little olive oil in a non-stick pan. Add crushed garlic and cook until it's almost brown. Add in a bunch of spinach leaves. Turn to coat and heat until done. Remember, spinach cooks down a great deal, so a full bunch will only give you about a small bowl full.

Creamy Mushroom Chicken

Here's a recipe pulled straight out of the pantry. Every so often it's a good idea to see what you have sitting around and make something from it. In this case, the jumping off point was a can of Cream of Mushroom soup. The only thing I did not already have was the mushrooms. This whole thing should take about 30 minutes.

Here's what you'll need:

1 cup sliced mushrooms (or more depending on if you like mushrooms)

2 tbsp butter

1 can Cream of Mushroom soup

4 chicken breasts

Salt & pepper

1/4 cup flour

2 tbsp olive oil

1/4 cup chicken broth

In a skillet, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Saute mushrooms until soft. Move to a bowl and save for later.

In same skillet, heat olive oil. Pound chicken breasts to about 1/8 inch thick. Season on each side with salt and pepper. Dredge in flour. Brown in oil about 4-5 minutes on each side. Move chicken to a plate.

Add chicken broth to skillet and scrape up drippings and other bits in skillet. Add mushrooms back in along with Cream of Mushroom soup. Mix everything together over medium heat. Add in chicken and coat with soup mixture. Cover and simmer about 8-10 minutes or until chicken is done, turning chicken half way through.

 

Top with mushroom sauce to serve.

This would go great with some rice or egg noodles and a veggie. In the picture above, I served it with Au Gratin Potatoes (recipe to come), but the combo of creamy chicken and cheesy potatoes was a little heavy.

Chicken Lombardi

Tuesday (if she doesn't decide to arrive before the scheduled C-section) my wife and I will welcome our second child, a girl. As the big day approaches, I've put together some meals in the freezer so we won't have to worry about cooking in the coming weeks when we are exhausted beyond belief. Of course, there are batches of Baked Ziti of various sizes, but we decided to see if I could duplicate another great fix-ahead meal.

In my wife's hometown of Salisbury, NC, a family friend has a catering company/restaurant called L.A. Murph's. Among other things, it has take-and-bake meals that our in-laws often bring when they come to visit, including when our son was born a couple years ago. One of our favorites is the Chicken Lombardi (or Lombardy, but I'm going with the Italian spelling). We've been thinking for a while that we need to make our own, so I decided to make it the other night and put a batch aside for after the baby comes.

Having never made this before, I searched for a simple recipe that looked like it would be good. I found one on food.com, and it turned out pretty well, though I made a few tweaks. So having given full credit to the original, here's my version:

Ingredients1-2 cups sliced mushrooms
4-5 tbsp butter, divided
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
flour
1-2 cloves garlic, chopped
3/4 cup Marsala wine
1/2 cup chicken broth
salt and pepper
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella or Italian blend cheese

Preheat the oven to 450.

Before you get cooking, you need to get the chicken breasts nice and thin. The best way is to cover them with a sheet of plastic wrap and pound them until about 1/4-inch thick. If you don't have a meat hammer/tenderizer, I've heard you can also roll them thin with a rolling pin.

Heat up a skillet over medium/high heat, melt 2 tbsp butter and saute the mushrooms. When they're tender, set them aside in a bowl.

Melt the rest of the butter in the skillet. Dredge the chicken in flour and brown (about 3-4 minutes on each side). Put the chicken in a baking dish coated with cooking spray. Top with the cooked mushrooms.

Keep the skillet on the heat. Add the garlic and brown a bit. Pour in the wine and broth slowly (it'll steam, splatter and hiss). Scrape the pan to loosen up all the drippings, garlic and bits o' chicken, etc. Season with a little salt and pepper. Bring to a boil. Lower the heat to medium/low and simmer for about five minutes. Pour over the chicken and mushrooms. Sprinkle with cheese. Bake at 450 for 12-15 minutes, or until cheese starts to brown.

The picture below shows the dish before it's topped with cheese and baked. Some how I forgot to take a picture afterward. Next time I make it, I'll try to remedy that.

 

We like it with some rice (like a boxed rice mix) and veggies. You could also do mashed potatoes.

Like I said, I made a batch (and later another) to freeze for another night. Instead of using a baking dish, I used an 8x8 aluminum pan. I bought three of these for about $2 at the grocery store.

I suggest letting it cool a bit, then putting the shredded cheese on top. Wrap it up with a few layers of plastic wrap. Let it cool completely in the refrigerator, then put it in the freezer.

To serve it later, you're best off defrosting it completely, then following the normal bake instructions. If not, you can bake it longer and lower. Try 400 for about 45 minutes.

Taco Night

History tells us that back in the Dark Ages, families would gather each Wednesday for a special event called Il Giorno del Spaghetti Principe. Obviously times change. And nowadays, in many families, there is excitement about Taco Night!

Now, this isn't much of a recipe. In fact, I'm not gonna give you specific measurements at all. But Taco Night is always a win in our house, because it's tasty and it's quick and easy. Who can beat that?

Our Taco Night typically involves chicken tacos (ground beef or turkey also work). I cut up a couple of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and cook it in a pan in a little olive oil. Usually I add some chopped onion and garlic as well. Once the chicken is browned, I throw in some mushrooms and add my favorite seasonings to taste. The great part about this is you can put in whatever you want. I typically use (a lot of) ground cumin, chili powder, cayenne pepper, paprika and garlic powder. Mix it together first or add one at a time. If you like other stuff or don't like some of those, that's fine. Again, use what you like. Stir in 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water and simmer till the chicken is cooked and the spices are evenly distributed. You can also add a little corn starch to the mix to thicken it all up.

You can cut corners a bit by buying a packaged taco seasoning mix. Beware, though, that they have a lot of sodium. Alton Brown, one of my favorite cooking personalities (he's really not a chef) has a great recipe for a taco seasoning mix called Taco Potion #19 that I've used and liked a lot.

Once the mix is done, we serve it on some warmed tortillas with guacamole, cheese, salsa, black beans or whatever toppings you like.

One variation I like from time to time is shredded chicken. I've done this a couple of ways. One way is to put the chicken breasts in a pot of boiling water. When they're cooked, drain most of the water, shred them with a couple of forks, return the meat to the little bit of water in the pot, add your spices and cook until evenly seasoned. You can also add in a little cheese and some milk to help it melt. Or before you go to work in the morning, put the chicken breasts in a Crock Pot. Add a can of Mexican stewed or diced tomatoes and some spices to taste and let it cook all day. Then just shred, stir and serve.

Even though it's just a chicken breast per person, we always find it makes a very filling meal, even with a little extra.

KID REVIEW: Our 19-month-old isn't too big on meat yet, but he LOVES black beans and guacamole. He will eat every bit he can get and wear much of it. So Taco Night is also bath night at our house.

Intro to Italian cooking: Baked Ziti

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me a question about Italian cooking, I wouldn't be worried about recipes, because I'd be eating out every night. From what I can gather, non-Italians think we Italians have a magical/mythical ability to make edible masterpieces from pasta, cheese, garlic, tomato sauce and a few other ingredients. That happens to be true, but you non-Italians can learn some of our God-given culinary skills.

From time to time I will include some of my Italian recipes, but we'll have to work up to the really good stuff. To begin building up, we'll start with a classically delicious recipe that is very easy to make: Baked ziti. Master this to build confidence in your culinary skills by creating something everybody likes. Seriously, everybody likes baked ziti, right? If you don't, well, I'm not sure I wanna know you.

Anyway... here's what you'll need:

1 lb box of ziti
1 jar tomato sauce of your choice (more if you're like me and like more sauce)
1 lb ricotta cheese
2 cups shredded mozzarella/Italian cheese mix divided

You'll never see a simpler list of ingredients for something so good! Start off by bringing a pot of water to a boil and stir in the ziti. Cook it a little less than what you normally like for pasta, because you're gonna cook it again. Drain the ziti and put it back in the pot.

Italian cooking secret #1: When making pasta, as soon as you cook and drain it, return it to the pot and stir in some sauce. This helps keep the noodles from sticking together.

In this case, go ahead and dump the whole jar of sauce in and stir it all up. Then add in the ricotta and mix thoroughly.

Italian cooking secret #2: Use ricotta. If you ever see an Italian recipe that calls for cottage cheese, replace it with ricotta. For some reason, perhaps because of availability or likely for cost, a lot of people like to substitute cottage cheese for ricotta. This is ridiculous. They are NOT the same. To begin with, cottage cheese is nasty. Even if you like it, you must understand there is a very significant culinary difference between cottage cheese and ricotta, and that is that cottage cheese has way more whey. Whey, of course, is the liquid. Ricotta, though it has some whey, is far more curd (solid). In fact, it should be pretty firmly packed. It also tastes better and is meant for Italian cooking. So reject all notion of cottage cheese.

OK. Back to the recipe. To the ziti, sauce, ricotta mix add about 1.5 cups of the shredded cheese and mix.

Italian cooking secret #3: Want to add a little more flavor to your Italian recipes? When a recipe, including pizza, calls for mozzarella or an Italian cheese mix, try substituting in some cheddar or other mix. When I made my most recent batch of baked ziti, I had some Mexican mix in the fridge and added that in. It just adds a little sharpness to the flavor.

So now you have your ziti mix. You can stop here as far as your mix, but you don't have to. I like to add in some Italian herbs (e.g. oregano, basil). Feel free to add in other ingredients you may enjoy, like mushroom or other veggies, Italian sausage, ground beef, meatballs, etc. I seem to remember my cousin's husband making baked ziti once with pepperoni slices and other meat mixed in. It was great. It's part of what makes this recipe so versatile.

Whatever you've mixed in, spread it into a large baking dish sprayed with cooking spray (makes clean-up MUCH easier). Top with the remaining cheese (and maybe some more herbs). Bake in a preheated 350-degree oven for about 30 minutes or until it's all bubbly and cooked through and the top starts to brown. If the top browns too quickly, tent with foil.

Like I said in the ingredients, if you're like me, you'll want more sauce. I LOVE sauce, so I always make another jar to top it all off. In the picture above you'll see I added some (store-bought) meatballs. This meal goes great with a salad and some garlic bread.

Ziti: Italian for "share"
OK. That's not true at all, but it might as well mean to share, because this is such an easy meal to do just that. Often when I make baked ziti, I make two batches, because other than the minimal time it takes to heat a little more water than for a single batch, there's no added prep time. The second batch (which you do not bake) I either put in the freezer for another day, or share it with someone else. You just defrost and bake it.

I put a batch away before our son was born, along with some other pre-made meals, so we wouldn't have to worry about cooking in those early days of parental exhaustion. I love to make it for other new parents, too, because it's easy on both ends, and like I said earlier, everyone likes it. Want proof? We just took over a batch to friends who had their second child last week. Their almost three-year-old loved it, telling his parents, "Mr. Kevin is a good cooker!"

His dad said they finally stopped him after three plates. MANGIA!