Shrimp Creole, April 21, 2016

Jeannene's been on kind of a shrimp strike for several years now. She will, on rare occasions, eat it. She loves a friend's shrimp cocktail when he brings it to game night potlucks and she loves it when I make my grandmom's shrimp in beer. She certainly enjoyed the shrimp we had in Savannah last summer. However, other than that, she has avoided it since getting undercooked shrimp two weeks in a row at restaurants.

I decided to make Shrimp Creole, though, after finding it in John T. Edge's wonderful Southern cookbook, A Gracious Plenty. I figured I could just pull some fish out of the freezer for her, if she didn't want the shrimp, but she ended up really loving it. I served it with jasmine rice and a green salad.

The recipe originated with the Louisiana Farm Bureau women of Baton Rouge. I made the recipe almost as they gave it and would make modifications next time. I found it skimpy on garlic & shrimp.  I also couldn't believe they recommended cooking shrimp for 10 minutes. My modified recipe would look like this:

Shrimp Creole

1-2 tbsp. butter or olive oil

1/2 tsp. paprika

1 onion, chopped

1 green pepper, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

14 oz. can stewed tomatoes

Salt & pepper

2 cups peeled, deveined shrimp (I chopped it because the shrimp I had were fairly large, but i would use smaller, whole shrimp next time)

Melt the butter in a skillet. Add paprika and stir well. Cook the onion, pepper, and garlic until tender. Add tomatoes, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil and cook 5 minutes. Add shrimp and cook another 3-4 minutes, until pinkened and cooked through. Serves 4-6.