Main dish: Shrimp Etouffe (Emeril’s Potluck)
Dessert: Lemon Squares (Emeril’s Potluck)
Miscellaneous: This is a five-beer meal - Jim drank two beers while making the Lemon Squares on Saturday and three beers while making the Shrimp Etouffe on Sunday.
Although Jim worked Saturday and we couldn’t make it to Findlay Market, he was still a trooper and agreed to cook this week. He’s almost out of recipes from Emeril’s Potluck that he can adjust for the vegetarians in the house, but still had Shrimp Etouffe (which he pronounces Es-twou-fee - cute). This may be the only recipe in this book that doesn’t call for cream. It does start with a roux. (I love that Jim can now say confidently that he’s making a roux and know what he’s talking about.)
Jim says many of the ingredients are similar to the Shrimp Creole: Creole seasoning, cayenne, green peppers, etc. This one has fewer tomatoes and isn’t as saucy as the Shrimp Creole. He made a few adjustments to the recipe - we don’t ever have white rice, so he substituted brown rice. If you sub brown rice for white, be sure to allow extra cooking time and watch to see if you need to add extra liquid. We didn’t have any shrimp stock, so he used vegetable stock. We have learned that fresh shrimp really does make a difference in recipes, but we didn’t have time shop for that, so he used frozen bags of peeled and de-veined shrimp. As long as you don’t overcook the shrimp, just 5-7 minutes, they’re usually still tasty. The next time we use fresh shrimp, we’ll get the kind we need to peel and make our own shrimp stock to freeze.
For some reason, desserts give Jim trouble, they always taste delicious in the end, but the journey to that point can be a little bumpy. His mom didn’t have him by her side in the kitchen when he was growing up, so there has been a bit of a learning curve. (Parents, please let your children cook with you, even tiny hands can “help” by adding cups of water or rolling out their own little piece of dough. I’m so thankful my mom always let me “help.” Now, I just know how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon and how to make buttermilk from regular milk, but most importantly, I‘m not afraid to improvise in the kitchen.) Anyway, off my soapbox and back to Jim’s dessert. I knew he started the Lemon Squares Saturday night and was almost finished with the crust when I went to bed. When I woke up Sunday morning, I saw this:
Notice all of the lemon filling on the counter? I pretty much knew what happened, but still asked Jim about it. Now to give Jim credit, the book says “transfer to a wire rack to cool,” which normally means you flip the dessert out of the pan onto the rack. Another possible factor: although he only had two beers while making this dessert, he had a few more before starting the recipe. Lesson: Don’t drink and bake. This morning he realized that he could have used the parchment paper that was placed under the lemon squares with extra sticking out of the sides to accomplish the “transfer” without the pesky effects of gravity.
The Lemon Squares were delicious and had a great by-product: Jim bought an entire bottle of limoncello (which he pronounces “lemonsello”) for the two tablespoons needed in the recipe. I plan on making good use of the rest of the bottle this summer. It’s in the freezer getting acquainted with a bottle of vodka right now. I think they’ll be great friends.
I had some extra cream, whole milk and strawberries that wouldn’t make it the week, so I made up a batch of strawberry ice cream. It was pretty good, but the Lemon Squares stole the show.
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