Platinum Chef, Challenge 7.... Mother's Day Edition

I actually dubbed it mother's day edition because the recipe I came up with that used the five ingredients I considered to be "girly" and even though my husband would of probably eaten it..... it was more fun to have a girls luncheon.

Ok - down to business....

Platinum Chef was started by Cara @ Cara's Cravings. It is a spin off from the Food Network show "Iron Chef" where the chefs are given one secret ingredient and have to come up with multiple dishes all featuring that one ingredient.... and they only have one hour. You try making dessert out of shrimp!!! Or whatever the secret ingredient is that day. Cara made it a little easier for us bloggers. She set out 5 ingredients and gave a couple of weeks for everyone who wanted to play, perfect their dish(es) and submit it (them). The most recent winner is Danielle @ Make No Little Meals. That means that she gets a turn to host the event which entails picking the ingredients, having the dishes submitted to her and then the most important part, selecting the winner.



Her five ingredients were -

Bok Choy
Panko
Mint
Yogurt
Mango











Side note - I had a bad shopping experience that thankfully didn't affect my meal too much. My mint was a little wilty, I wanted really small shrimp and all they had was 21/30 count (which ended up being perfect), the mango wasn't fully ripe on one side and the bean sprouts had turned into a wormy mush. I could salvage the mint and mango but the bean sprouts were trash.

My first thought when reading the ingredients was "lamb" because mint and lamb go together so well. But I had never cooked lamb and it is rather expensive to buy around here. So I went back to the drawing board. Since the bok choy is a popular Chinese vegetable and panko is a Japanese bread flake, I chose an Asian theme. But.... that just helped me with the theme. I needed an actual dish. After much thought, I decided to go the summery route and make a salad.

I present to you, my Platinum Chef submission:

Bok Choy Salad with Mango Mint Dressing and Shrimp "Croutons"

Let's start with the dressing. Which by the way I think would be excellent to dip chicken fingers in. It was so summery and light and sweet but with a tiny kick of spice. I honestly was not expecting it to be as great as it was.



the ingredients are -

1 cup plain yogurt
juice and flesh of one mango
1 oz of mint leaves (about half a cup)
2 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp honey
1 tbsp sweet hot mustard





Dump everything into a blender and use the "liquefy" button to turn it into a dressing. I did this the night before and let all the flavors party in the fridge.

See how delicious this dressing looks!!!

For the shrimp, I used a store bought Sesame Ginger marinade and let them soak overnight (peels and tails removed). I must say that I am not too fond of Asian marinades that contain mandarin orange, and actually did not know this one even contained it until I got home. I was a little apprehensive to use it, but after I tasted it, I must say this is my new favorite marinade for shrimp. It really compliments the taste of shrimp!







To turn the shrimp into croutons, I toasted one teaspoon of sesame seeds.





I combined the toasted sesame seeds with 1/2 cup panko, 1/4 teaspoon onion powder and 1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper.







From there, take the shrimp straight out of the marinade and dredge them in the panko mixture. Really press it into the shrimp.









Drop them one by one into hot vegetable oil and fry for about 30 seconds each. It really does not take long at all to fry shrimp! You don't want them to be overcooked and chewy.

Now the fun part - putting it all together!!! I plated up one head of chopped bok choy leaves, which perfectly served two people.

Topped that with fun asian inspired ingredients such as - chopped water chestnuts, diced red, green and yellow bell peppers, chopped carrots, enoki mushrooms, and crunchy rice noodles.

And for the finishing touch on my Platinum Chef submission, I spooned the dressing onto the salad and topped with the shrimp croutons. It looked amazing and the taste was equally amazing!

Accidental Dinner

Yesterday I completely planned on making my version of chicken casserole with some left over grilled chicken that we had Sunday night, it is one of Bradley's favorites. But when I went to the store and picked up a can of condensed soup for the casserole, I couldn't help but notice the recipe on the back that read "Seafood Tomato Alfredo". Uh... YUM, and it looked so simple! Of course I didn't stick to it, I used it as a crutch to create something totally off course for last nights dinner.

Seafood Tomato Alfredo
recipe by me with help from campbell's (serves 2, maybe 3)

2 tblspns butter
1 clove of garlic, minced
half a small onion, sliced into half moons
salt, pepper and red pepper flakes (if you're in a spicy mood)
1/2 can Campbell's Cream of Mushroom with Roasted Garlic Soup
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup diced fire roasted tomatoes (canned)
raw shrimp
cooked linguine pasta

heat the butter in a skillet and cook the garlic, onions, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes until the onions are tender. mix in the soup and milk, add the tomatoes and bring to a boil. add your shrimp and cook until they are done. pour the mixture over hot linguine.

~~~~~

Really good! Although, I don't know why they would call it an Alfredo if there is no cheese involved.

As you can probably guess, I had some left over fire roasted tomatoes. Oh, the taste of those tomatoes was SO good by itself!! But, in order to get Bradley to even think about trying them I knew I had to be cunning and mix them with a few things I knew he could not pass up. So I took the left over tomatoes, added a little minced garlic and feta crumbles and served it "bruschetta style" atop toasted sour dough slices.

Entertaining Gran

Bradley had a tradition with his grandmother that every Christmas the two of them would go to Red Lobster and dine on shrimp scampi and that would be his gift to her. It is one of her favorites and Bradley, much like me, loves all things seafood. A couple of Christmas' ago he was short on cash and decided to make scampi himself and have her over. It was actually our first Christmas back together and of course I was invited. Our company had paid for all of us to get the flu vaccination that day and I felt like complete crap, I went straight from work to the recliner in his living room and dozed in and out of consciousness. Well, he wasn't having the best day either. He had to stay late at work which meant dinner wasn't going to be ready on time, and the recipe he had found online from a "copy cat" website, left much to be desired. I think it went something like, "wine butter lemon and shrimp - bake at 400 degrees". I couldn't help him because of the whole dead to the world thing, and it was too late to find a new recipe, so we ate tough, tasteless shrimp and have joked about it ever since.

The following Valentine's Day, I decided to really wow him. We had just gotten engaged and were all in love and instead of him spending money taking me out, I wanted to show him how grateful I was to have him as a Valentine for the rest of my life. So our menu was simple: Filet Mignon wrapped in bacon with Burgundy mushrooms (which was special because it was the first dish I ever cooked for him), twice baked potatoes, salad, bruschetta and... shrimp scampi. I made it with jumbo shrimp and we each had 3 shrimp with our steak. It was divine, it was delightful, it was.... now my job to prepare the shrimp scampi every Christmas. Since our kitchen had been packed since Thanksgiving and we didn't get it unpacked until after new year's, Gran's Christmas present was a little belated.

I had spent almost a week researching scampi recipes and picking what I thought were the best qualities of each of them, to make into one ultimate recipe. I found that the one key ingredient was good wine. You could not skimp on the white wine. There are a million variations of white wine out there, so I just began reading labels until I found one that fit the dish.

It is hard to measure each ingredient because this is a dish that you need to tailor to the amount of guests you are having - in other words... do not get mad when you see the recipe.

I never thought I would be doing this, but here goes...

DeLa's Shrimp Scampi
recipe by me

enough shrimp for all your guests
olive oil
salt n pepper
minced garlic
chopped green onions
white wine
fresh lime juice

Let's start with the wine selection. I spent Thursday night in the wine section of a food giant reading labels and let me just say, unless you want wine in a box or arbor mist.... find some where else to get your wine. Finally I picked up a riesling and started reading it, the first sentence grabbed me and I threw it into my buggy, "Lemon and lime will leap from your glass.....". Well we need the tastes of both in this dish! Once I got home and kept reading, it added that it was the perfect addition to "prawns hot off the grill". Is that the perfect wine for this dish or what?!
Of course you have to make sure it is good, because we all know that you should never cook with a wine that you would not drink...


Mmmm, yes, perfect.

Now you need to clean your shrimp. For the three of us, I bought 2 pounds of medium sized shrimp. I would prefer that they be de-veined and peeled, but again... I was at Food Giant. Just give them a good rinse


Peel them how you like and toss them into a large skillet.


You could leave the tails on for an added "vacation feel", but I chose not to this time.

Drizzle with olive oil, just enough to slightly cover each one, you don't want it to be too oily.


Then sprinkle kosher salt (or any kind of salt) and fresh ground pepper on the top - to your liking. Once you have enough, jump in hands first and toss them around making sure that each one gets a little bit of all three ingredients.

The next two ingredients are also very important - the garlic and green onions.


I know what some of you are saying, "I don't like to bite into an onion". Well, I promise that in this dish you won't. In fact, you have to actually hunt for an onion to eat in the sauce because they do not stick to the shrimp. The onions add flavor and color and that's it. No crunch, so onion haters - please do not omit them!

I roughly chopped about 3 green onions and minced a clove of garlic and threw them right on top of the shrimp.


Now, add the wine. You just want enough to reach the middle of your pile of shrimp, not enough to float them around.


Give it a good stir to get the garlic and onions covered in the wine, too.

Here comes the time where you can just walk away. Let them soak for 30 minutes or just however long you've got.

Once you've finished letting them soak, set the skillet on the eye, turn it on about medium and do a constant stir while they are cooking. You want to keep moving them around so they all cook evenly.

Once they are all pink, remove the skillet from the eye and squeeze a lime over them.


Give the dish another good stir to blend in the lime juice... and there you have it. A perfect shrimp scampi.

I didn't cook all week!

Bradley had been in Huntsville on business. He was living out of his suitcase and surviving on Burger King and McDonalds (yuck!). I had not cooked all week (aside from the fudge rendezvous) and really wanted to do something fun but special. One of my besties had bought me the Paula and Friends cookbook for Christmas last year, since I had all this alone time and I never finished reading it, I pulled it back out and started reading again. I don't know if it was the rumble in my stomach or the urge to get back in the kitchen, but everything looked homecoming meal worthy. I needed something simple and fast, but elegant and delicious. Back in the summer when Bradley's job took him to Daphne for a week, he had shrimp and grits for the first time... and hasn't stopped talking about them since. Why had I not made these sooner? It is such a down home dish! And of course Paula's recipe was even more down home than any restaurant could of made.

Shrimp and Grits
recipe by Martha Nesbit and published in the Paula and Friends Cookbook

4 cups water
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 cup stone-ground grits
3 tablespoons butter
2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
6 slices bacon, chopped
4 teaspoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 cup thinly sliced scallions
1 large clove garlic, minced

Bring water to a boil. Add salt and pepper. Add grits and cook until water is absorbed, about 20 to 25 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in butter and cheese.

Rinse shrimp and pat dry. Fry the bacon in a large skillet until browned; drain well. In grease, add shrimp. Cook until shrimp turn pink. Add lemon juice, chopped bacon, parsley, scallions and garlic. Saute for 3 minutes.

Spoon grits into a serving bowl. Add shrimp mixture and mix well. Serve immediately.

~~~~~

I did a few things differently, Publix just didn't sale anything other than instant grits, but I'm sure they did the same job. I used a little extra bacon, because we love it so and since the grease is SO hot and it doesn't take much heat to cook shrimp, I put all the ingredients in at once and cooked them together so the flavors would seep into the shrimp. We had a lot ofGouda left over from the pork chops so I used it instead of cheddar, and lastly, I did not mix the shrimp and grits together, I served them side by side.

Oh it was SO WONDERFUL!!! Mama you really missed it, I know it was better than the cheeseburger you had, even if it was the last one you'll have on a Friday night! But I will always be open, you'll just have to catch this dish the next time it is on the menu.

The recipe said it would serve four, and I almost halved it since it was only the two of us, but I figured we both would be extra hungry for some home cooking. We were and there was enough grits left over for us both to have a big serving at breakfast the next morning. So I would recommend doubling the "shrimp" part of the recipe and leaving the "grits" part as it is if you are serving 4 or 5 people.

I only took a picture of the shrimp, the grits just would not take a pretty picture. This'll get your mouth to watering.....