Our thirst was quenched by red wine and accompanied by a feast that went from under the turf to swimming in the surf:

• garlic mashed potatoes (root vegetables),
• caramelized green beans with candied almonds (grown in the turf),
• grilled ribeyes (grazing on their pastures), and
• butterfly bayou shrimp (feeding at the bottom of the water)

This was my version of comfort food. I love a good steak and the shrimp is a dish that my father made often while I was growing up. The green beans and the mashed potatoes were made by Elliotte who did justice to her mom’s recipes. She also made the brownie and chocolate chip cookie dough dessert, but that’s another post. It was definitely a comforting, stick-to-your-ribs, food-coma-inducing meal.

This meal took a lot of coordination and help to get everything done at the same time. This dinner party was also done kind of spontaneously, so I had to defrost the ribeyes and the shrimp quickly. Here are my usual meat defrosting methods with their costs and benefits:

The Defrostatorium

• Microwave on defrost setting
  • Just wanted to get this one out of the way. I hate doing this. It’s fast, but unless you have a super expensive microwave, you’re going to get hot spots (even with a rotating plate) which is going to denature the proteins by steaming the water in the meat. In other words, it will cook the meat and ruin the texture.
    (Speed: 8, Texture: 3)
• Running water
  • While this is fairly wasteful of water, it is a fairly good compromise between speed and texture. Run cold water or at the absolute hottest, lukewarm. Again, heat is your enemy. You want the meat to thaw, but not cook. However, the meat CAN get waterlogged, so you’ll want to drain afterward and that can add additional time.
    (Speed: 6, Texture: 6)
• Letting it sit (NOW WITH FAN!)
  • This is my favorite method if I have the time. You can let it sit in the refrigerator (Speed: 1, Texture: 8), sit out (Speed: 3, Texture: 8), or, what I just recently learned: put a fan blowing over the meat. This circulates air around the meat while gently thawing it
    (Speed: 5, Texture: 8).

I started with the butterfly bayou shrimp, which is a legacy from when my father used to work in Louisiana. One of our family friends also worked there and submitted the recipe to his company cookbook. Among recipes for armadillo and squirrel there are two gems that were a mainstay at dinner parties: red beans and rice and the aforementioned shrimp. My father (and uncle) make it with a lot more sauce than I did and serve it with hunks of french and sourdough bread to soak up the sauce. It’s more of a soup than a side dish, so you can make it his way by increasing all of the liquids (including the oil).

The nice thing about this dish is that you can adjust both the taste and the spiciness very easily. The taste can be modified by adding whichever barbeque sauce you like the best or even making your own. I prefer hickory flavor because that’s what my father always made it with. However, even though I do have hickory liquid smoke, I had too much going on in this meal to make another attempt at barbeque sauce. The spice can be modified by throwing more crushed red peppers in there. I know the recipe doesn’t call for it, but I feel you can never go wrong with a bit of cayenne.

I love the stains... this is a cookbook that has been lovingly used for many years and will be for many more.

I won’t reproduce the recipe here as it would largely be repeating what’s in the picture above. The notable changes that I made were:

• Shelling the shrimp: This was more for cleanup purposes than anything else. I didn’t want people to have shells on their plate. If I was doing this as a soup or anything more than a side dish, I would leave the shells on, because they do add flavor to the sauce as it simmers.
• More garlic: This speaks for itself. You can never go wrong with more garlic.
• Do not measure anything: Look at this recipe to get an idea of the proportions and then do the following to adjust the taste and texture.
  • More heat – increase the chili flakes and/or paprika and/or black pepper and/or add cayenne
  • More sour – increase the lemon juice and/or add lime juice
  • Thicker – add more BBQ sauce and/or add cornstarch or flour solution and/or cook longer (you run the risk of overcooking the shrimp)
  • Soupy-er - add more butter and/or olive oil and/or lemon juice (don’t add too much extra lemon juice or you have to balance it out with BBQ sauce)

In this case, the heat was unfortunately woefully low, which was fortunately quickly remedied with dashes of cayenne and more chili flakes. Oh, and if you don’t want to buy chili flakes, just look in your junk drawer and see if you have little packets of crushed red pepper from the last time you ordered pizza. They are pretty much the exact same thing.

Since I was trying to get everything done at the same time, I tried to lay everything out or as I’ve learned to call it from countless repetitions on cooking shows, mise en place everything (NOTE: I’m not sure if you can verb “mise en place” but I do what I want. This is Food By Z, not Food by Grammar NaZ).

(From L to R) Ribeyes, Boiled Potatoes (in the pot in the background), Shrimp, Lemon, Cayenne, Hickory Smoke, Skillet for Shrimp, Piping Hot Grill Pan for Steaks, Green Beans, Garlic, Brown Sugar, Butter, Brownie and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Mushrooms

For the ribeyes, I wanted to keep it simple, in the interest of both efficiency and flavor. Ribeye is my favorite cut of steak. While a filet might be more tender and prime rib might be more marbled, the ribeye to me really captures the essence of beef, so I go with a technique that is the best way to do most steaks:

1. Get some piece of metal really damn hot.
2. Put the piece of meat on the metal.
3. Flip the piece of meat.

Cooking In Progress

Since these ribeyes were thin-sliced, I didn’t finish them in the oven as I usually do. However, due to lack of counter space, I ended up stacking them on top of each other which ended up overcooking them slightly. However, I didn’t hear any complaints from my guests. I actually didn’t hear anything from them because they were busy eating.

Wha?