Monday, August 13, 2012

Crook's Corner Shrimp and Grits

What a fun weekend! My Friday night consisted of a ride-along with a local cop who specializes in DUI enforcement for a work project - to say it was eye-opening is doing it a disservice! Drivers beware: this man is not messing around!

Saturday, it was off to Baltimore for an Oriole's game. You never realize how much you love a stadium and the person keeping you company until you're in the middle of a 3.5 hour rain delay on a warm August night. A few beers and a lot of people watching later, the game finally started! Despite the mark in the "L" column, it was an extremely fun night.


The Inner Harbor makes for a pretty view for the morning run!
So let's talk about this recipe. There's a restaurant in Chapel Hill, NC called Crook's Corner, known throughout the whole region for their famous shrimp and grits. I finally got my hands on the recipe a few months ago, but I've been putting off making the recipe out of the slight fear that it would be impossible for a homemade version to live up Crook's Corner's finest. Optimism in tow, fellow former Chapel Hillian and BFF Jennie came and joined me for our testing experiment. 


Wine + Shrimp = Happy Chef Jennie
Um. WOW. Only complaint, why didn't it make more? MM's reaction: "That isn't shrimp and grits, that's an experience."


Crook's Corner Shrimp and Grits
Recipe from My Recipes

Ingredients:
2 cups water
1 (14-ounce) can chicken broth
3/4 cup half-and-half
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup regular grits
3/4 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon hot sauce
1/4 teaspoon white pepper (I used black and can't say that I noticed anything amiss)
3 bacon slices
1 pound medium-size shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1/2 cup chopped green onions
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup low-sodium, fat-free chicken broth
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon hot sauce
Lemon wedges

Directions:
1. Bring first 4 ingredients to a boil in a medium saucepan; gradually whisk in grits. Reduce heat, and simmer, stirring occasionally, 10 minutes or until thickened. Add Cheddar cheese and next 4 ingredients. Keep warm.
2. Cook bacon in a large skillet until crisp; remove bacon, and drain on paper towels, reserving 1 tablespoon drippings in skillet. Crumble bacon, and set aside.
3. Sprinkle shrimp with pepper and salt; dredge in flour.
4. Sauté mushrooms in hot drippings in skillet 5 minutes or until tender. Add green onions, and sauté 2 minutes. Add shrimp and garlic, and sauté 2 minutes or until shrimp are lightly brown. Stir in chicken broth, lemon juice, and hot sauce, and cook 2 more minutes, stirring to loosen particles from bottom of skillet.
5. Serve shrimp mixture over hot cheese grits. Top with crumbled bacon; serve with lemon wedges.

Glazed Cinnamon Swirl Almond Cookies

Remember when I told you that you could repurpose the leftover tart dough from the summer berry tart recipe? Well here you go - a recipe that will take you 5 minutes to put together but will give the wow-factor of a way more labor-intensive project. I had originally envisioned these puffing up like cinnamon rolls, but it turns out that they prefer to be cookies, and I am not complaining. MM requested that these cookies become a regular part of the rotation!

Pre-Baking...we gobbled them up once they were cooked!

Glazed Cinnamon Swirl Almond Cookies

Cookies
Ingredients:
Leftover almond tart dough
2 tbsp butter, room temperature
Cinnamon to taste
2 tbsp sugar (adapt to your taste)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375F.
2. Roll out leftover dough until it's approximtely 1/4" thick.
3. Spread butter over flattened dough, and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.
4. Roll up the dough tightly, pinching the ends to keep the cinnamon and sugar inside the roll.
5. Slice the dough in 1/4"-1/2" slices, and lay flat on a foil-lined baking sheet.
6. Bake for 20 minutes, or until cookies are golden and no longer soft.

Glaze
Whisk together 1.5 cup of powdered sugar with 2 tbsp of milk. Drizzle over cookies while cookies are still warm.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Summer Berry Tart


It’s been a difficult week here at the casa. What started out with a lot of excitement ended in a stark reality check. MM and I had been on the search for a great dog, and we found one who melted our hearts. A meet-and-greet and a homevisit later, Archie came to stay.

Sadly, Archie isn’t quite cut out for apartment living, and we quickly came to the realization that our trio wasn’t the right fit. So today, we are saying goodbye to Archie. I hope you get a life full of ear scratches, big fields, and people to lovingly keep you company, little buddy. We’ll miss you.

On a lighter note, let’s get back to cooking. This tart is delicious. Did I say delicious? I think I meant to say “fight over the last piece you're the last man standing” scrumptious. You can use any type of seasonal berries, but make sure you note how long the dough must chill in the refrigerator before cooking. I forgot to do that, and had to delay my baking for a bit as a result.

Bonus: the tart dough recipe makes enough for three crusts. You can certainly cut the recipe in half to minimize leftovers. Orrrr you can do yourself a favor and make that extra dough. I’ll be posting a recipe this weekend for an easy way to use the leftovers for breakfast and become the most popular person in your household.

Summer Berry Tart
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Tart Dough (makes enough for three 9-inch tart crusts)

Ingredients:
2 ½ unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
Lightly packed ½ cup ground blanched almonds
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs, at room temperature
3 ½ cups all-purpose flour

Directions:
1.      Place the butter in the work bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade and process, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed, until creamy. Add the confectioners’ sugar and process to blend well. Add the ground almonds, salt, and vanilla and continue to process until smooth, scraping the bowl as necessary. Lightly stir the eggs together with a fork and, with the machine running, add them to the work bowl; process for a few seconds to blend. Finally, add the flour and pulse until the mixture just starts to come together. When the dough forms moist curds and clubs and then starts to form a ball, stop! — you don’t want to overwork it. The dough will be very soft, and that’s just as it should be.

2.      Gather the dough into a ball and divide it into 3 pieces. Gently press each piece into a disk and wrap each disk in plastic. Allow the dough to rest in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours, or for up to 2 days, before rolling and baking. (The dough can be wrapped airtight and frozen for up to a month.)

3.      To roll and bake tart crusts: For each tart, butter the right-sized tart pan and place it on a parchment-lined baking sheet. If you are making more than one tart, work with one piece of dough at a time.

4.      Depending on how thin you’d like your dough, you can either roll out your dough or press it using your fingers. The easiest way to roll out your dough is to place the disk between two pieces of parchment paper, and then use a rolling pin to flatten the dough. If you use your fingers, gently begin pressing the center of the dough outwards towards the edge of the pan. As this warms the dough a bit, put the dough back in the refrigerator for a few minutes before baking.

5.      When you are ready to bake the crust(s), preheat the oven to 350°F. To avoid bubbles in the crust, line each crust with a circle of parchment paper or foil and fill with dried beans or rice.

6.      Bake the crust (or crusts) for 20 to 25 minutes, or just until very lightly colored. If the crust needs to be fully baked, remove the parchment and beans and bake the crust for another 3 to 5 minutes, or until golden. Transfer to a rack to cool.

Pastry Cream

Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 large egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

Directions:
1.      Bring the milk to a boil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cover the pan, turn off the heat, and set aside for 10 minutes.

2.      Working in a heavy-bottomed medium saucepan, whisk the yolks, sugar, and cornstarch together until thick and pale. Whisking all the while, very slowly drizzle a quarter of the hot milk onto the yolks. Then, still whisking, pour the rest of the liquid in a steady stream over the tempered yolks.

3.      Put the pan over medium heat and, whisking vigorously and without stop, bring the mixture to the boil. Keep the mixture at the boil, whisking energetically, for 1 to 2 minutes until cream has formed, then remove the pan from the heat and scrape the pastry cream into a clean bowl. Allow the pastry cream to cool on the counter for about 3 minutes.

4.      Cut the butter into chunks and stir the chunks into the hot pastry cream along with the vanilla extract, continuing to stir until the butter is melted and incorporated. At this point, the cream needs to be thoroughly chilled. You can either set the bowl into a larger bowl filled with ice cubes and cold water and, to ensure even cooling, stir the cream from time to time, or refrigerate the cream, in which case you should press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface to create an airtight seal.

Finishing the tart
Shortly before you are ready to serve the tart, spread the pastry cream in the bottom of the baked tart shell and arrange the berries over the top. I used strawberries and blueberries, but feel free to experiment with any berry that’s in season!