Shrimp Etouffee

Maybe you knew, maybe you didn’t know. But my family has Louisiana roots. My love for cajun food, and mardi gras is probably apparent. One of my favorite dishes is etouffee. I can’t eat it often because its so buttery and delicious that it can’t possible be good for you right? I don’t make mine with roux. I only use that for gumbo. It’s pretty time consuming for me.

The base of many if not all cajun dishes. The holy trinity, celery, onion and green bell peppers.

Butter. Always butter.

Smother the veggies until tender.

Add your shellfish and garlic. Season.

Add water and flour. Check the seasoning again, season to taste!

Stir in parsley and green onions, turn off heat.

Mama Miemo’s Etouffee

Ingredients

1 ½ stick of butter

1 medium yellow onion, chopped

1 large green bell pepper, chopped

3 stalks of celery, chopped

4 cloves of garlic, minced

2 lbs of peeled, deveined shrimp, or crawfish tails with fat

1 tbsp all purpose flour

2 stalks of green onions, sliced thinly

¼ cup parsley, minced

Cajun Seasoning, black pepper, cayenne pepper, to taste

Directions:

In a heavy bottom pot with a lid, melt down butter. Add onions and sautee until clear. Add green bell pepper and celery. Cover, stirring occasionally until golden. Add shrimp and garlic. Stir until shrimp is pink. Whisk 1 cup of water with one tablespoon of all purpose flour until well blended. Add to pot, stir and add seasoning. Bring to simmer. Continue to season to taste. When sauce thickens up to a gravy consistency, add parsley and green onion. Stir, cover and turn off heat. Serve over rice.

Posted on December 10, 2014 by miemo 0

Crawfish Pistolettes

Who doesn’t love food, stuffed into another food? In this case, I am talking about rolls, stuffed with Cajun goodness. In it we have the Cajun mirepoix, the holy trinity, celery, onions and green bell pepper. Along with crawfish, and jalapeno velveeta. OOH. I’m hungry.

Since I am no longer in Louisiana, and it’s not always crawfish season, I have to start off frozen. Interesting that has Louisiana written all over it…but it’s a product of China. Womp! I get these in the frozen seafood section of Wal-Mart.

Start up with the “holy trinity” of Cajun cooking. I wish you can smell it. I can smell it as I write this.

Add cream of mushroom, jalapeno velveeta, hot sauce, and seasonings.

Then the main attraction, and stir until warmed all the way through, and bubbling a little. Remove from heat, and set it aside to cool a little.

Hollow out the rolls, but keep the tops matched up, because we are putting these babies back together!

Stuff it.

Put them back together, and brush melted butter on it. Bake, and ENJOY.

I used this recipe as a basis, but of course I made it my own. Because that’s how I roll. Especially when it comes to rolls. GET IT? HAHA.

Posted on April 11, 2014 by miemo 0

Hot & Juicy Crawfish

How have I not written about this place before? I’ve gone here a couple times already, to quickly satiate my cravings for crawfish, when my brother can’t whip me up a pot “real quick”. Out of the two places in the area that I’ve been to for crawfish, this place is only second best to my family’s boil.

I took my little there for her birthday the other weekend. It was her first time EVER having crawfish. But being the adventurous eater she is, she opened them like a pro. She even sucked the head for the sweet brains, and loved it. I was a super proud big. They also have crab legs, clams, blue crabs, oysters, calamari…basically its a down and dirty seafood joint.

They take their spices really seriously there, so their “mild” is spicy enough for me. So tread carefully when you are ordering your spice levels. My favorite is their Juicy Cajun flavor for the crawfish. Since it’s not like Ai Toy’s crawfish, I have to dip the meat back in the sauce…but at least it doesn’t taste like pond water!

Posted on April 22, 2013 by miemo 0

Jammin’ Jambalaya

What a cliche name, I know, but it really is jamming. And delicious. So delicious, that AFTER my mardi gras party, I had to make another round to enjoy (since I didn’t get to at the party). And I made it a little spicier, which I didn’t do for the party since I was feeding a large group of people with a different range of spice levels.

So let’s get cooking!

Get the ingredients ready. The divine trinity in cajun cooking is celery, onions and green bell pepper. This is the base for the flavor in both etouffee and gumbo as well! For jambalaya I’ve got those three, plus garlic, tomatoes and a medium grain rice.

Emeril used olive oil. I used butter. Cook the onions, celery and green onions in the butter for about 4 minutes, when the onions turn clear.

Then add the garlic, tomatoes, hot sauce and Worcestershire sauce. Stir until well mix. Then add the rice.

After rice is mixed in well, slowly add chicken broth. Simmer over medium until rice is tender. While this is happening, I dice the chicken breast, and chop the shrimp then add the crawfish tails in the same bowl, and mix well with cajun seasoning, you can you Tony’s or Louisiana brand creole seasoning. Emeril also has a recipe for his bayou blast.

You can find the recipe here.

Posted on February 15, 2013 by miemo 0

The Cajun Experience

…not really. Out of all the cajun restaurants I’ve been to in DC, looking for a taste of home, this was my first disappointment. After coming down from my personal mardi gras 2012 party, I was having high hopes for a professionally done Mardi Gras dinner. I was looking for the Cajun Experience, pun intended.

Lets start off with the food, because that, to me, is always where we should start! I love food. Instead of offering their regular menu tonight (which is what I was hoping for), everyone was getting the buffet. The place was set up nicely, and had a great, fun zydeco band with a tiny dance space available if you wanted to get down. I did enjoy the vibe and I like the space.

Abita beer was unlimited that night, which was awesome considering the $45 price tag. The food however was sub-par. I really expected better, but I won’t be too harsh, since it was massed produced for the crowd. There was a variety of traditional cajun entrees, gumbo, jambalaya, etouffee..and mac and cheese and hushpuppies. The jambalaya tasted like tomato sauce from a jar with sausages thrown in. There was no hit of cajun spices. The etouffee was good, I prefer my cajun dishes a lot spicier, but I understand that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. However there were no spices on the table to help it out. You were confined to your styrofoam divider plate and your plastic cups.

Needless to say, I only had one plate, and spent the night enjoying the music, and my company and $45+ worth of delicious abita beer. I also felt overlooked as a customer. Our server was very sweet, could be a little more attentive, but nothing blatantly wrong with the service. The guy who might have been to the manager seemed to talk to every table and dropping off goodies such as masks, and drink cozies, and didn’t even make eye contact or attempt to say hello to our table… but made a point to say hello to the surrounding tables. Make note that I wasn’t even in a corner table. And no, I wasn’t a quiet mousey, no eye contact patron either. I joked with the table next to us, clapped and cheered to the live band and was trying to make it a good experience. Overall it was not.

I will give it another shot on a regular day, their brunch menu sounds awesome. But I won’t be attending their Mardi Gras party again in the future.

Posted on February 22, 2012 by miemo 0

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