What's for Dinner at my house: Coconut Lime Shrimp

This was a sort of strange dish I concocted. It did not get raving reviews from the family so I won't post the recipe. Everyone did eat it though, even while sort of complaining about it. I actually liked it and went back for seconds. Basically I sauted some shrimp, red bell pepper and garlic and set it aside. Then I mixed part of a can of coconut milk, lime juice, chicken stock, a bit of fish sauce and arrowroot and simmered until thick. Then I added chopped and steamed cauliflower and the shrimp back in. It looked like shrimp and grits, but had a coconut-lime flavor. Anyway, it's what we had for dinner, I guess they can't all be winners!
-Amanda

Shrimp in a Cream Cheese Sauce

This dish tasted good, but I learned a lesson today. Cooked spaghetti squash does not freeze well. I had this meal planned out in my head for tonight dinner and the flavors came together except for the squash which didn't taste bad, but it disintegrated into mush. So if you make this dinner, either serve it over noodles, freshly cooked spaghetti squash or even brown rice. And if you make too much spaghetti squash in the future, well... don't freeze it.
-Amanda

Shrimp in a Cream Cheese Sauce

2 cloves of garlic, minced
8-10 button mushrooms, sliced
1 lb shrimp
8 stalks of asparagus, cut into one inch pieces
10 tablepsoons of butter, divided
4 oz cream cheese
1/2 cup of water
1 tsp arrowroot powder
1 tsp of dried basil or a few leaves of fresh

Saute garlic in a tbsp of butter in a large skillet. Remove to a large bowl before it browns. Add mushrooms and a bit more butter, and them until they are almost browned. Put in your cut asparagus and saute them with the mushrooms. Add salt and pepper. Remove mushrooms and asparagus to the bowl with the garlic. Put your shrimp and more of the butter in the skillet and cook almost all the way through. Again, remove it to the bowl with the vegetables. Put the rest of your butter and cream cheese into the skillet on medium and stir it to help it melt. It will look like a curdled mess. Once it is all mostly melted whisk the arrowroot into 1/2 cup of water. When it has dissolved pour it into the cream cheese and it will magically come together. Add some fresh or dried basil. Pour vegetables and shrimp back into the sauce and simmer until shrimp is all the way cooked through. Serve over noodles, rice or freshly cooked spaghetti squash! Serves about 4.

How to fix messed up Homemade Mayonnaise

I've been making homemade mayo for a few months now. The taste doesn't even begin to compare to store bought. One day when I was making it the girls asked what I was doing. I told them I was making mayonnaise and of course they wanted to taste it. I stuck the tip of a spoon in the mayo and let them taste it. They then wanted to eat it by the spoonful! We use it like a dip, using it sometimes instead of ketchup on our hotdogs and sausages. And when you make it with pastured chicken eggs, healthy oils and even ferment it a bit for probiotics, it's good to eat by the spoonful if you so wish to! Evey once in awhile something goes wrong when you make homemade mayo. Usually you don't get an emulsification going with your egg yolk before you start pouring in your oil. Well this has happened to me twice, and I just wanted to let you know... it can be fixed!!!

The recipe is here: How to make Homemade Mayonnaise. I don't use the whites every time. Sometimes I save them back for other recipes, by freezing them.

Yuck... didn't emulsify when I used my food processor today.

If your mayo isn't emulsifying correctly pour it from your processor/blender into a pourable mixing cup. I actually had about a little over a cup of oil/mustard/egg/lemon here before I realized it wasn't going too well!

Clean out your blender or move onto another device. Today I messed up twice. (Last time this happened to me I fixed it on the second go, today it took me three total tries.) I moved from my processor to my blender, but when that didn't work, I pulled out the metal bowl and whisk.I wasn't going to give up! Doing it by hand can be harder but it is easier to see how the emulsification is going.

In a clean bowl (or clean blender) break one new egg yolk and 1 tsp of mustard. Whisk and whisk until the egg yolk barely starts to get fluffy. Then slowly, slowly, slowly drizzle a bit of the "ruined" mayo into the egg. Set it down and whisk until it is completely incorporated. Pour a couple of teaspoons in at a time, whisking the entire time. I found it was easier to pour, sit the oil mixture down, and whisk again. Then repeat.

Eventually it will get thick and yummy! Taste and add more lemon/salt as needed. The yolks from pastured chickens will make the mayonnaise more yellow than store bought. Add a couple of tablespoons of whey (strained from yogurt) and set the mayo out at room temperature for 7 hours. This will ferment the mayo (adding probiotics!) and preserving it so it will last for weeks in your refrigerator instead of a few days. When I first heard about this I was a bit skeptical too, but sure enough it works!

(I entered this post in Kelly the Kitchen Kop's Real Food Wednesdays!)

Craptastic Soup

Last week I had a hard day.   I came home and to relax I made one of my favorite soups, Ezogelin.  Note: It is my favorite soup to eat,  I have never made it before.  I cracked open a cookbook and followed the recipe exactly.  It was horrid.  Ezogelin soup has finely cracked bulgur and red lentils in it.  It was flat tasting and the bulgur soaked up too much of the the liquid. It was like sludge.  I could have added more liquid, but it was not tasty enough and I would have ended up with WAY too much soup. 
I have manage to revitalize the soup though! In two ways!

-Jules

Bulgur Pilaf

Lentil Soup

The original recipe for the Ezogelin soup was
1 liter of water
1 onion chopped
1 tablespoon of tomato paste
100 grams of red lentils
100 grams of fine bulgur
(Warning: Do not follow this soup recipe)
The onions were sautéed and then the rest of the ingredients were to be added and boiled.  As stated before, the soup was flat and the consistency was wrong.
I split in half and salvaged it in two ways.  To make the pilaf I put half the lentil mix in a saucepan, brought it to a boil and then added a cup of larger grain bulgur then sautéed onions and peppers and added them in with more pepper, paprika and cumin. 
To save the soup I added more tomato paste and pepper paste.  I also sautéed minced garlic and added chicken broth. 
I ended up with two experimental dishes which worked out great and I did not have to throw out the original craptastic soup.  Total Win!

Acorn Squash Pizzas

Let's just say some dinners sound/taste better in my head than in reality. I took the leftover filling from my raviolis from the other night and smeared it on some crescent roll dough. I par-cooked some shrimp and put it on top and baked for 20 minutes. The result: An almost pretty dinner (the stuffing sort of looked like scrambled eggs, which they weren't) and it was the way wrong texture. It sort of felt like raw dough. So, this one goes down as a failure! They can't all be masterpieces, can they?
-Amanda