Paula Deen’s Hash Brown Casserole

Wow, I went for two days without posting a new blog article - we had a busy weekend. Our son and his wife came to stay with us for two days because they were attending a wedding. Saturday, my wife’s family had a gathering so we attended that and I took Bonnie’s Baked Beans and Sunshine Cake, both were a huge success. On Sunday, I decided to make the Paula Deen Hash Brown Casserole. I watched her TV program when she made it and I thought it looked good, so I printed the recipe and waiting until we had some company to make it.

I made the casserole and about the time I took it out of the oven, I noticed a pain in my left lower back that was getting worse. I remembered the downside to potluck family dinners, is you never quite know how someone else handles their food. I let our family eat while I went a laid down to see if the pain would subside. No such luck, I had several bouts of nausea, but none of the other effects of food poisoning. A quick check of the internet showed the appendix on the right side, so that’s not the problem. After suffering with this for 12 hours, my wife convinced me to go to the ER at 9:30 pm to see if I had a kidney stone. After three hours and pokes, prods, and a CT scan, the results came back that outside of a slightly inflamed kidney, all the tests were normal. The doctor thought I might have a pulled muscle, but to take Tylenol, which has eliminated the pain. However, I lost a full day while lying in bed trying to get comfortable and sleeping.

I confirmed my decision to make this recipe for breakfast when I got up Sunday morning and everyone else was asleep (they had a late night). I had already thawed my one pound of Jimmy Dean Maple Sausage and rummaged around in the freezer to find a loaf of buttermilk bread.

I started by melting the butter in a large skillet while I chopped one-half a white onion. I sautéed the onion while I trimmed the crusts off the slices of bread, this was very easy because the slices were still frozen. Into another skillet, I browned the bulk sausage, realizing after I put the sausage in the pan, the skillet was almost too small so I had to be careful while turning the sausage to keep if from flying out.

Once the onions were cooked, I added the half package of frozen hash browns to the skillet with the onions and cooked the hash browns for about five minutes. I had to switch from a rubber spatula to one made of metal so I could loosen the browning potatoes from the bottom of the stainless steel skillet. Once the potatoes were cooked, I spread them in the bottom of my prepared 9x13 inch glass-baking pan.

On top of the potatoes, I spread the bread cubes over the potatoes and the sausage over the bread cubes. I quickly mixed the egg and 2% milk with the salt, pepper, nutmeg, and mustard. I poured the egg mixture over the top of the three layers in the baking pan trying to coat all the bread cubes. I shredded the parmesan and cheddar cheeses and spread them over the casserole then put in the oven at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

By now everyone else in the house was up and ready to eat. When the casserole finished cooking, I took removed it from the oven, set it on top of the stove, and told everyone to dig in, and then I left to deal with my back pain.

I still have not tasted the casserole because the thought of it makes me feel a little nauseous. Everyone who ate the casserole really like the flavors, taste and texture, though it is very rich. Fortunately, my wife has agreed to freeze the remainder because I am not sure I could look at it right now. I do look forward to tasting it in the future, and it seems to be a hit when you have a group people for breakfast.

Find the recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paulas-home-cooking/hash-brown-casserole-recipe/index.html

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Artichoke Rice Salad with Shrimp

Last week I wrote about the lemon blossoms that I saw on a Paula Deen TV show where she made different foods for a dinner party.  On that same show, Paula made an Artichoke Rice Salad with Shrimp and I printed that recipe to make in the future.  On a recent trip to the store, while we purchased our food for the week, I also purchased a few things so I could make this salad. 

I found a box of Chicken flavored Rice-a-Roni to purchase that pretty much matched the description that Paula gives in her recipe.  We also purchased some green onions, a green pepper, and a jar of pimiento-stuffed green olives.

In re-reading the directions in the recipe, though I can see that while I read all the instructions before I started, but I still missed the first step: browning the rice before cooking (it didn’t seem to matter).  I added the 2 1/2 cups of water to the skillet and then added the rice and seasoning and let it heat to a boil.

While the rice heated, I prepared the chopped green pepper, green onion, and green olives.  We have a mega-sized jar of artichoke hearts, so I got out about six ounces and quartered the pieces.  I put the 1/2 cup of mayonnaise in a small bowl and then added about 1 /4 cup of the marinade from the jar of artichoke hearts.  Instead of a whisk, I used a dinner spoon to mix the mayo and marinade together and it worked very well.

About this time, the rice was boiling, so I covered the skillet with a lid, and turned the heat to low so the rice could simmer for ten minutes.  Into a medium sized metal bowl I added all the chopped green ingredients, then added the mayonnaise mixture, and stirred it all together.  After making some over spiced recipes, I am leery about adding the full amount of spices, so I only added 1/2-teaspoon of the curry, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and just a dash of black pepper.

Once the rice was tender, I removed it from the heat and let it cool for a few minutes before adding the rice to the mixing bowl with the other ingredients.  I stirred everything together and then added the shrimp.  I used frozen pre-cooked shrimp that I had already defrosted so I just dumped them in and stirred.

This recipe can be served hot or cold, so I had a bite to eat of the salad while it was warm and thought it was very tasty.  My wife was delayed getting home, so I covered the bowl with plastic wrap and popped it in the refrigerator.

For dinner we had the Artichoke Salad and lightly steamed asparagus.  I am glad that I only used half the amount of curry powder, as a full teaspoon would have overpowered the other flavors.  As I made it, we could pick out the flavor of the green olives, but the artichoke hearts were just a firm mass that tasted like curry.  The pieces of green pepper added a nice crunch to an otherwise soft dish.  The salad was still a little warm when we ate dinner, so we look forward to tasting it tomorrow after it is fully cooled and has some time for the flavors to mature.

Find the recipe at: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/artichoke-rice-salad-with-shrimp-recipe/index.html

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Lemon Blossoms

A few days ago while my wife and I ate lunch, we watched a Paula Deen TV episode about making different foods for a dinner club event.  My wife, who really likes foods with lemon flavoring, was especially intrigued by Paula’s Lemon Blossoms, a lemon muffin with a lemon glaze.  She asked me to consider making those for something we could take as part of a house-warming gift for a party this weekend.  Being the obliging husband (and loving to make desserts) I said sure.

The next day we went to the store where I picked up the cake mix, box of pudding, a lemon, and one pound bag of powdered sugar.

Just before I started to mix the ingredients, I turned on our oven to 350 degrees in the conventional bake mode.  Into the bowl of our stand mixer, I dumped the 4 eggs, yellow cake mix, lemon pudding mix, and 3 /4 cup of oil.  I used the whisk beater attachment and mixed all the ingredients for about two minutes.  The resulting batter is a very thick and sticky yellow goo.  It stuck to everything, the whisk, spatula, bowl, and fingers.  I finally used my (clean) fingers and a spatula to remove the batter from the whisk and sides of the bowl.

I got out our mini-muffin pan and gave it a good coating of cooking spray and spooned some of the batter into each muffin hole.  I was just re-reading Paula’s directions that say to pour a small amount of batter, there is no way you can pour this batter!  I tried to fill each muffin hole about half full, which I estimated was about a tablespoon of batter.

I put the muffin pan in the oven to bake for twelve minutes then I started on making the glaze.  I dumped the powder sugar (yes, I purposely skipped the step of sifting of the sugar) into a medium mixing bowl and zested the lemon into the bowl.  I added the lemon juice, oil, and water into the bowl and stirred it with a large spoon for a few minutes to make a creamy glaze.

When the cooking time was up, I removed the muffin pan from the oven and found that while I had nice muffins, I had put too much batter in each hole, and the muffins spread out over the top of the pan (muffin tops), it turned out not to be a problem.  I turned the pan over onto a small clean kitchen towel, knocked all the muffins out, and let them cool while sitting upside down for several minutes before glazing.

To glaze the muffins I used the same technique as Paula on her TV program: sticking a fork into the bottom of the muffin and then dipping the muffin in the glaze.  The glaze was very thick and quite a bit was covering the muffin and slowly dripping off.  I realized that for each muffin I could not be holding the fork over the bowl to recover most of the glaze.  I quick solution was to grab our spatula holder that clips over the side of a bowl, and use it to hold the fork while the muffin drained.  To make the glaze thinner and flow more easily, I added an additional tablespoon of water to the glaze.

My glazing process was to insert the fork in the bottom of the muffin, place the muffin in the glaze (top down), and spoon the glaze over the sides and bottom of the muffin.  Using the spoon, gently remove the muffin from the glaze and insert the fork in the spatula holder so the excess glaze could drip back into the bowl.  After about thirty seconds of draining, I would place the glazed muffin on a wire rack over a cookie sheet to finish drying the glaze.

When I made the second pan of muffin, I filled each hole with about half a tablespoon of batter, this made muffins that didn’t flow over the top of the pan, but they seem quite small.  I found the best technique for filling the muffin pan was to use a spoon to scoop up some batter from the mixing bowl and using a wet finger, slide the batter from the spoon into the muffin pan.

I ended up making about forty-eight muffin, most of which made it through the glazing process (though some were eaten along the way).  These muffins have a pleasant lemony flavor that is not as overpowering as the lemon flavor in desserts like lemon meringue pie.

While I was busy baking and glazing, my wife came into the kitchen, we talked about the muffin size, and we decided that Paula used a muffin pan that had larger holes than our mini-muffin pan.  I tried making three muffins using our standard sized cupcake pan, but I felt these muffins were too large and seemed to collapse in the middle when they cooled.  We had the video stored on our DVR so we watched that segment of the show and decided that before the next time I make these, we will need to find an intermediate sized muffin pan.

Find the recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/lemon-blossoms-recipe/index.html

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Bobby’s Baked Chicken With Dijon and Lime

This is one of the first recipes that I tried from my The Deen Family Cookbook by Paula Deen and we enjoyed it so much, I have made it several times since.  I went looking for the recipe on the FoodNetwork.com site, but this recipe was not that Paula Deen has used on her TV shows, that figures, as this recipe doesn’t contain any butter!  I did find the recipe on the Deen Brothers site as well as some other recipes that I may try soon.

This recipe calls for 3 1 /2 pounds of chicken, cut into eight pieces, because in the past we preferred chicken breasts, I made this recipe with six chicken breasts, but I may try it again with some chicken thighs.

To start, preheat the oven to 400 degrees (I used the convection mode of our oven at 400 degrees and it worked fine).  The basic sauce is very easy to make, whisk together the Dijon mustard, mayonnaise (this is a Deen recipe), minced garlic, zest and juice from a lime.  Place the salt and peppered chicken in a baking pan (I used a 9x13 inch glass Pyrex pan) and pour the sauce over the chicken.  Make sure all the chicken is coated and then bake for thirty minutes.

I found that using convection mode, the chicken started to brown a little early so I covered the baking pan with aluminum foil after about twenty minutes.

I served the chicken breasts on brown rice and then spooned some of the sauce from the pan over the top of the chicken and rice.  The chicken was tender and moist and the sauce adds a nice flavor with the garlic and lime.

Leftovers freeze very well.  Place in a plastic bag with the leftover sauce, seal and freeze.  Before I froze the last batch, I cut each chicken breast into three pieces to that it would quickly freeze and thaw.

This is definitely on my list to make for family and friends.

Find the recipe at: http://thedeenbros.com/recipes/recipe_detail/26/

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Not Yo' Mama's Banana Pudding

On Friday, I had some friends over at lunchtime to listen to music played on vinyl records.  Every so often, we have these parties at my house, they bring the pizza, and I provide the beverages and the music.

My dad was a radio personality (disk jockey) from the 1950’s through the 70’s and he would bring home records that were old or not the format that the station played.  My sister and I reaped great rewards when our dad worked at a country music station in the 70’s, because he would bring home all the rock music for us.

When our dad passed away, my sister and I went through boxes containing thousands of records and kept ones that sounded interesting or that we had played in our youth and we sold the rest.  For curiosity sake, I saved some records sung by interesting artists like: John Wayne, Marylyn Monroe, and Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen.  There are also some interesting titles like the Al Smith Hit: I Picked a Booger when I Picked You (it must be a country song).

My wife and I also have about fifty old LP (Long Play vinyl record albums for readers under 30 years of age) that we collected in our youth.  Our group’s lunch parties consist of eating pizza, listening to music and chatting.

I decided for last Friday’s gathering to make a dessert to share.  About two years ago, I made a Paula Deen dessert: Not Yo’ Mama’s Banana Pudding, after seeing it demonstrated on the FoodNetwork on TV.  I hunted through my saved recipes and could not find the recipe printout, so I found the recipe on the FoodNetwork.com site.  I have included the direct link to the recipe at the bottom of this post so you don’t have to watch the video to get the recipe.

I knew that I would be making this dessert one day, so I already had the two packages of Pepperidge Farm Chessmen cookies in our pantry.  On a recent trip to the store, I purchased the cream cheese, pudding mix and a very large container of Cool Whip.

Friday morning I got out our 9x13 inch glass-baking pan and lined the bottom with the Chessmen cookies.  The cookies just covered the bottom of the pan without having to cut any to fit.  Next, I sliced seven bananas into the pan covering the cookies on the bottom.  I didn’t worry about getting an even banana/cookie covering, but just loosely spread out the bananas over the cookies.

I used the paddle attachment of our Kitchen Aid stand mixer to combine the package of cream cheese and can of condensed milk until creamy.  In a medium sized metal bowl I mixed added the pudding mix and two cups of milk.  The directions say to use a hand mixer on the pudding mix, so I got out our mixing wand with a whisk attachment and started mixing.  I quickly discovered that because the sides of the bowl were too short, I was throwing pudding mix all over the kitchen.  I switched to an old fashion hand whisk and had the pudding mixed in about two minutes.

I used the whisk to fold the cream cheese/condensed milk mixture into the pudding (not the same order as the recipe), then I added about 2 /3 of the container of whipped topping because I had purchased a 16 ounce container and the recipe calls for 12 ounces.  I folded all the ingredients together being careful not to over mix the filling.

I spread the filling over the bananas in the pan and then covered the top with more Chessmen cookies.  Because the pan has sloping sides, I had to break some of the cookies in half for one end to cover the filling.  I covered the pudding with plastic wrap and placed it in the refrigerator until I was ready to serve it.

Our group enjoyed our time of eating and chatting.  Once we had consumed the pizza, I brought out the banana pudding.  One person asked me if my wife made the dessert for us.  “No, I made it!”  I replied.  I found that to keep the pieces served from being mangled, you need to cut around each cookie for a serving.  This is because the cookies on the top and bottom don’t directly line up.  We all enjoyed a nice cool piece of banana pudding.

This cool and creamy dessert would be great on a warm summer afternoon.  Even though the filling is made with vanilla pudding, the overall taste when eating the dessert is of banana.  My wife and I enjoyed a piece of this dessert after our dinner that night and I took several squares to some of our neighbors to enjoy – like one of my 45 records by John Ono Lennon: Instant Karma.

Find the recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/not-yo-mamas-banana-pudding-recipe/index.html

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Chocolate Sybil Cake

I asked my wife what dessert she would like for a mothers day meal, she said that chocolate is always good.  I visited the Foodnetwork.com site and performed a search on chocolate.  I started looking at the number of user review stars each recipes received and at the reviewers comments - I settled on a Paula Deen recipe for Chocolate Sybil Cake.

This recipe looked good and there was only one item I needed to purchase at the store: a 16-ounce can of Hershey’s chocolate syrup.  After my trip to the store, I set out a stick of butter and four eggs to warm to room temperature before I started mixing.

I used our KitchenAid stand mixer with the spatula beater bar and creamed the 1 /2-cup of butter with the one-cup of sugar for several minutes until fluffy.  I added the four eggs one at a time while beating the mixture well after each egg.  I added the salt and baking powder to the mix (I need to look for some different baking powder without aluminum, which is bad for you).  I added the one-cup of flour and continued to mix.  For the final ingredients, I added the can of chocolate syrup and the teaspoon of vanilla extract.

I poured the cake batter into a greased and floured glass Pyrex 9x13 inch baking pan and placed it in a 350-degree oven for thirty minutes.  While the cake cooked, I went outside and planted a cherry tomato plant that will sit on our patio.

A few minutes before the cake was finished cooking, I was back in the kitchen and saw that while the cake is baking, you mix the frosting and pour in on the cake when it comes out of the oven.  I had missed that step!  It really does pay to read the entire recipe before you begin cooking.

I quickly followed the instructions for the frosting by heating one stick of butter with 1 /2-cup of chocolate chips, one-cup of sugar, and 1 /3-cup of evaporated milk.  I brought this too a boil for about three minutes then added the vanilla and 1 /2-cup of chopped pecans.

The cake had been out of the oven for about a minute when I poured the hot frosting over the top of the cake.  With everything being nice and hot, it was easy to get an even coating of the frosting over the entire cake.

We each sampled a piece of the cake with a little bit of vanilla ice cream after dinner last night.  I was surprised that the cake had compressed to about an inch thick after pouring on the frosting.  The resulting cake is a dense but very moist cake with a strong chocolate flavor.  It is very good and I would rate it four out of five stars.  For an absolute chocolate overload, I think we both still prefer the Flourless Chocolate Cake.

Find the recipe at: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/chocolate-sybil-cake-recipe/index.html

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Cookie Dough Truffles

When preparing for my cookie onslaught at Christmas, I found another Paula Deen recipe I wanted to make located in the Best Desserts magazine on page 82.  This recipe is for Cookie Dough Truffles and one look at the picture in the magazine was enough to entice me to make them.

When I sat down to write this blog post, I checked the Food Network site and found that the recipe for the Cookie Dough Truffles is listed so I don’t need to duplicate the recipe here.

When I reviewed the ingredients list, I found the requirement for 1.5 pounds of chocolate candy coating.  Neither my wife nor I had ever used a candy coating, but we remembered seeing it at several of the craft stores in the area, so we made a trip to purchase a couple of bags of Wilton chocolate flavor Candy Melts.

Making the cookie dough recipe was very easy and straightforward; mix all the ingredients following the directions.  Once the mixing was completed, I placed the bowl with the dough in the refrigerator for about an hour to chill.  Once the dough was firm, I used a spoon, gathered about one tablespoon of dough, and rolled it into a ball.  The balls were placed on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper.  Once I had a tray full of dough balls, I placed them back in the refrigerator to chill until I had completed rolling out all the dough.

Unsure about how to melt the Candy coating, I made a double boiler out of our Kitchen Aid mixer bowl set into a saucepan of boiling water.  I tried a variety of methods to get the dough balls evenly coated with the chocolate: handling with rubber gloves, spoons, etc.  I finally found that two forks seemed to work best.  I would drop the dough ball into the chocolate, roll it around with a fork and then using a fork in each hand, lift the coated dough ball out of the bowl and deposit it on the parchment paper.

This recipe makes about five dozen truffles, so it took me about thirty minutes to coat all the dough balls.  I had some trouble keeping the chocolate in the double boiler at the correct temperature, the chocolate would seemed to get shiny or very thick so I had to keep adjusting the temperature on the burner.  Once I completed a cookie sheet of truffles, I would place it back in the refrigerator to harden.  After about thirty minutes, I packed all the truffles for storage in some Tupperware containers with a layer of parchment paper between each layer.  One of the containers we placed in the freezer to remove the easy temptation to eat all the truffles.

We wondered what to do with the remaining chocolate coating, and my wife remembered we have some plastic candy molds in our attic.  While I finished coating all the truffles, she brought out the molds and got them ready for the chocolate.  We had a great time producing chocolate leafs, bunnies, and flowers in the molds.  Many of these molded chocolate items we used as decorations on other chocolate desserts (see Flourless Chocolate Cake).

The truffles were terrific and a big hit whenever I served them at the holidays.  I took the last two dozen to a New Years Eve party where they quickly disappeared.  This recipe is very easy to make and because it doesn’t require cooking, even young children could help make the dough.  One caution, it seems that everyone likes to sample the mini chocolate chips so be sure to have enough saved away for when you make the recipe.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Sunshine Cake

Sunshine is something that we could use today in Oregon; we have had rain for the last several days and it is expected to rain all week.

I originally found this recipe during our kitchen remodel.  My wife and I would visit a bookstore looking in the magazines for kitchen ideas.  I always sneak a peek into the Paula Deen Best Desserts magazines special: .  Who can pass that up?  I purchased the magazine and spend some of my free time planning which desserts I would make once we had a working oven.

One of the recipes I chose was the Sunshine Cake on page 42.  It was very easy to make and tasted great.  I checked on the Food Network site and there is a Paula Deen Sunshine Cake recipe listed, but it is a different recipe from this one.

Sunshine Cake
Recipe courtesy Paula Deen and Best Desserts

• 1 (18.25-ounce) box yellow cake mix
• 1 (3.4-ounce) box instant vanilla flavored pudding mix
• 1 (11-ounce) can mandarin oranges, undrained
• 1 (8-ounce) can crushed pineapple, undrained
• 2 large eggs
• Vanilla Pineapple topping (recipe follows)
• Garnish: mandarin orange slices (drained)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and spray a 9x13 inch baking pan (I used a glass Pyrex pan) with a nonstick spray (the recipe called for a spray with flour, but regular PAM worked fine).
Combine in a large bowl the cake mix, pudding mix, mandarin oranges, pineapple, and eggs.  Mix on medium speed until fully combined.

Pour into the baking pan and bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.  Let the cake cool completely before applying the topping.

Vanilla Pineapple Topping

• 1 (8-ounce) can crushed pineapple undrained
• 1 (3.4-ounce) box instant vanilla flavored putting mix
• 1 (12-ounce) container frozen nondairy whipped topping, thawed

Combine the pineapple and putting in a medium bowl stirring until well mixed.  Fold in the whipped topping.

Spread the Vanilla topping on top of the cake and garnish with the mandarin orange slices.  As this is a sunshine cake, I made a sun design on top with the mandarin oranges.

Everyone really enjoyed this cake when I made it in mid December.  It has just the right amount of sweetness mixed with the flavor from the mandarin oranges.  My mother-in-law liked this cake so much, she asked me to make it for her next birthday.
What a nice complement!

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Sugar Cake

Last week I was working out at the fitness club and watching Paula Deen on the FoodNetwork.  She was cooking with her son and going to make the gooiest cake ever for their meal.  I missed most of the episode when I switched during a commercial to the American Movie Classics channel.  When I returned to watching Paula, her son was just taking a small bite of the cake and said that in eating the one piece, he felt that he had developed a cavity.  I thought, that sounds really good!

We were having company over for dinner last night so I looked up the recipe for Paula Deen’s Toffee Gooey Butter Cake on the internet then figured out what I would  need to purchase at the store:  a yellow cake mix, toffee bits.  I found it incredibly hard to find toffee candy or toffee bits at the store.  Finally, I found the toffee bits at a smaller store in the baking area.  Strangely enough, I found toffee candy at the Home Depot hardware store when I was picking up some moss killer for my yard.  Too bad that my grocery store doesn’t sell moss killer.

I decided to make the cake the day before (Friday) so that it would be cool and ready for company on Saturday night.  It was very easy to make the cookie bottom using the cake mix, egg and one stick of (yes, you guessed it) butter.  After mixing in our stand mixer, I used my hands to pat the dough flat into the Pyrex 9x13 inch glass baking pan.  It covered the entire bottom of the pan and was about half an inch thick.

Then I made the filling, I was very careful to slowly mix the one pound of powered sugar into the two eggs and package of cream cheese.  I added the vanilla and then another stick of - butter.  The toffee bits are folded in to the filling just before spreading it into the pan.

I spread the filling over the bottom cookie, and placed it to cook for 50 minutes in the smaller bottom oven of our range.  After 40 minutes, it was smelling good, but was very runny in the middle of the pan, so I cooked it for the full 50 minutes.

Not good!  I could smell the burning odor even before I entered the room.  The top was just to the correct gooey consistence, but most of the bottom of the pan was burned.  Next time I cook something like that, I will use the larger oven. 

I did manage to salvage a little and took a bite.  I felt like I was going into insulin shock.  This cake was so sweet, really too sweet.  It was not a loss that we were not going to serve it to our company.  For desert, we ended up picking up an All American Chocolate Cake from Costco about 15 minutes before our guests arrived.  The burned portion was so bad that I just threw away all most all the cake.

I will not be making this recipe again, though I have a couple of small pieces saved in the pantry for later.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell 

Shrimp Scampi with Artichokes and Basil

When I woke up this morning I could smell the scent of garlic on my pillow, then I remembered last night’s wonderful dinner of shrimp.  We have tried cooking shrimp before frozen from the bag or from our local grocery store, and the results are less than satisfactory.  Typically, the shrimp either are fishy smelling (old) or have no flavor at all, so why bother.

In preparation for cooking this dinner, I visited the local fish market and purchased two pounds of medium shrimp.  I could have purchased slightly smaller shrimp that were already shelled and de-veined, but I though I would do that work myself and save the extra $1 per pound.

Last night my wife and I returned from our 3-mile walk, and I started right in to shelling and de-veining the two pounds of shrimp.  An hour later, I was ready to start cooking!  What a tedious job that is, next time I will take the smaller shrimp and pay a little bit more.

This is a Paula Deen recipe from page 67 in The Deen Family Cookbook, so of course I started with the full stick of butter as directed.  Next time I would use about 3 /4-stick of butter and the results should still be great.  I heated the butter over medium-high heat, added the garlic, and cooked for about a minute.

Next into the frying pan went the 1 /3-cup of the white wine, some red pepper flakes (next time I will only use about 10 flakes), salt, and pepper.  This simmered for a couple of minutes.  While that was simmering, I dried the shrimp and squeezed out one third cup of basil paste.  When I went to the store to get the basil, there was no fresh basil, but a basil paste that comes in a squeeze tube.  So, I got that to try, why not! 

I quickly hand juiced a lemon that was in the refrigerator that I had already zested the outside for another meal.  I finally managed to open the giant jar of artichoke hearts that we had purchased at Costco.  The recipe calls for one cup of artichoke heart pieces, I added about one and a half cups, and next time I will add two cups to balance the shrimp.  I will also cut the artichoke pieces into smaller sections as some were to large. 

Into the frying pan went the shrimp and artichoke hearts and while it cooked, I stirred together all the ingredients until the shrimp turned pink.  Removing the frying pan from the heat, I stirred in the lemon juice and the basil paste.

I served the shrimp with the artichokes and basil sauce over brown rice with raw baby carrots on the side.  The flavor of the shrimp was fantastic!  The lemon and basil made a flavorful sauce on the shrimp and rice.  There was a little too much fire in the sauce, so as I mentioned, next time I will reduce the amount of red pepper flakes.

This recipe will easily serve four people and we have quite a bit left over for our lunch.  This recipe is quick to make (with pre-peeled and de-veined shrimp) and tastes wonderful.  It is a recipe that I will definitely will make again.

What do you think?  Should this recipe be served on the red (above) or the white plate?

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell