Boiled or sauteed shrimp, layered with paper thin strips of lemon, red onion, bell pepper, jalapeno, and garlic, whole bay leaves and dressed with a vinaigrette. Shown here on a slice of toasted bread.

Pickled Shrimp

The Cajun went shrimping last Friday and I spent most of the weekend heading and putting up shrimp. Of course, his favorite way to eat shrimp, hands down, is my crispy Fried Shrimp, so those were on the menu right away! I mean c'mon... the man certainly earned that in the least!

I also boiled about 7 pounds, both to eat, and to use in other easy and cool meals this week, like my Shrimp and Macaroni Salad or Shrimp and Egg Salad. I also thought it would be a great time to use some of those to get my Pickled Shrimp recipe up!

You'll need about 3 to 4 cups of cooked shrimp, depending on the size of the shrimp you're using. You should have enough that it will fill a quart sized jar about 3/4ths full. These can be cooked shrimp you boil or saute yourself, or shrimp purchased already cooked. If you purchase already cooked shrimp, use the seasoning tip in the recipe. While all of the ingredients can be mixed together for marinading, I prefer to layer this dish, similar to how I do my Fire 'n Ice Pickles. A canning jar works well and can be turned over several times during the marinading process.

Click Here to Read More & to Get Recipe »

Summer squash - zucchini, crookneck or a mixture of the two will work - is briefly stewed in onion, garlic & cream, mixed with leftover cooked rice, topped with a Parmesan breadcrumb and baked to a crispy golden brown.

Summer Squash and Rice Gratin

As I watched The Cajun shovel this in with our meal, y'all know I had to grin, but he caught me peeking at him! "I know," he says, "what is it?" "It's food," I say, grinning. "Just eat it."  He did! Every, single, speck of it. That says a lot y'all, coming from a non-veggie eating man.

This was a delicious side dish that I adapted from Real Cajun, a cookbook that you may recall I recently reviewed. The photography in this cookbook is simply incredible, so much so that as the book lay by my chair on the floor, my youngest cat was convinced that the crab claw poking out of the gumbo on the cover was a real crab. I wish you could have seen him inching and backing off from the book, and finally reaching out and carefully patting at it multiple times with his paw, only then convinced it was just a photo!  If you're a cat owner, this behavior makes complete sense to you.

If you're from this area of The South and don't yet own this cookbook, and especially if you enjoy collecting them for the photos and stories, as much as for the recipes, this is one you'll probably want to add to your collection.

Click Here to Read More & to Get Recipe »

Reader Recipe Round-up 6-22-11

So many folks posted on the Facebook Wall last week about the dishes that they had made, I wondered if the rest of the readers would enjoy a compilation post showing who made what, and what adaptations that they made - so I posed the question to the readers, and they said yes!

Blogs, and particularly food blogs, have kinda exploded in growth since I first started doing this myself, so I realize that y'all have many choices for recipe sources - and limited time. Thank you for making Deep South Dish one of your choices to visit! It thrills me beyond words when you let me know that you've made and enjoyed one of my recipes.

I also took a quick cruise through the comments for the past week and tried to find the scattered ones where you mentioned making a site recipe, but please accept my apologies if I happened to have missed you. I hope to feature one of these every so often as I can, so I'll try to do better on the next round-up. Here are some Deep South Dish recipes that readers shared they made, and what they said about making the recipe - I hope that you enjoy the round-up!

Click Here to Read More & to Get Recipe »

A refreshing salad made with broccoli slaw and ramen noodles, bathed in a vinegar and oil marinade long enough to soften the veggies and noodles, but still leave a nice bite. Add in leftover beef, chicken, pork or shrimp to match the flavor packets and you have a great summer salad!

Ramen Noodle Salad

Poor ole ramen noodles get a bad rap, because like most pre-packaged products, they tend to have high levels of sodium and flavor enhancements like MSG, but... how many of you will confess to having at least a couple of packets of them hanging around in your pantry right now? Those little noodle soup packets must sell pretty well because they sure are plentiful in the stores. One reason is because they are pretty darned cheap. Raise your hand if you have had moments where you too lived off of them while a college student, or as a newly graduated first time out on your own young person.

I'll be the first to confess that I pretty much always have a couple of packets in my pantry because they are a quick and easy meal that still rates better nutritionally than a pass through the fast food burger or chicken joint. So yes, while of course I don't eat them everyday, I do enjoy them guilt-free on occasion. Personally, I prefer the Oriental, Pork and Shrimp flavored ones the best. After I boil the noodles, I pour off a lot of the water before stirring in the seasoning, and then my favorite thing to do is toss in some leftover protein to make them more of a substantial meal. A couple leaves of greens like spinach are a great add-in too.

Click Here to Read More & to Get Recipe »

A nice tender quick bread, seasoned with cinnamon and studded with walnuts, made using some of that garden bounty of zucchini.

Zucchini Nut Bread

I suppose just about anybody that grows zucchini has a collection of recipes for their abundant bounty, including one for a sweet quick bread. On the other hand, those of us who are lucky enough to be the recipient of bags of that bounty, sometimes just don't know what all to do with them! This recipe is for the latter of us.

My savory preference from the group of summer squash is yellow crookneck, but I adore sweet bread made with shredded zucchini. If you've never tried zucchini bread before, just think along the lines of carrot cake, because it really is deliciously sweet and truly, but for the little specks of green that are scattered about in the bread, you'd never know you were eating something with zucchini in it. Back when I last worked at a law firm, the wife of my boss, a wonderful southern gentleman from Pontotoc, Mississippi, would flip over a loaf of zucchini bread. People love home baked goodies and frankly it never hurts to find favor in the wife of the boss!

Click Here to Read More & to Get Recipe »

A Man-Pleasing Menu for Father's Day

Time to honor Dad on his special day and what better way than with a great steak dinner. I've gathered up a suggested menu from my recipe collection that I think your special guy will really enjoy!

Share

A Father's Day Menu

Southern Sweet Iced Tea
Crab Martini

Grilled Veggie Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing

Buttery Cheesy Garlic Bread

Grilled Ribeye Steak

Asparagus Bundles or Grilled Baked Potatoes

Homemade from Scratch Brownies

New Orleans Style Cafe au Lait

Southern Iced Tea Cocktail

{scroll down for pictures & recipe links}

Click Here to Read More & to Get Recipe »

Pot Roasted Chicken - Chicken in a Pot with Bacon, Onion and Potatoes

Whole chicken, slow-roasted in a covered Dutch oven, with bacon, onion & potatoes. Add a nice garden salad & a loaf of warmed French bread for sopping up those marvelous pan juices.

Chicken in a Pot

I happened to catch whole chickens on sale for 67 cents a pound recently, so of course I stocked up on a few and had in mind one of them would land as another form of roasted chicken for the Sunday Supper series for sure.  But, as I do sometimes, about mid-stream of beginning to prep the chicken for roasting, I decided to pull down Julia Child's cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and do something different.

Though it's been around forever, last year, Dorie Greenspan sort of brought Chicken in a Pot back to the forefront with the release of her newest cookbook Around My French Table and the gorgeous pastry sealed version that graces the cover.  Julia calls this type of trussed chicken, first browned in butter and then roasted in a covered casserole with a mixture of vegetables, herbs and seasonings, Casserole-Roasted Chicken. There are several versions in her cookbook, including this one with bacon, onion and potatoes.

Click Here to Read More & to Get Recipe »

Start with leftover cooked chicken, or a rotisserie chicken, add a blend of mayo & bbq sauce, bacon, onion, celery & pecan, & put it all in a wrap. Add some carrot sticks and a side of fruit & you have a wonderful hot weather meal in no time.

Barbecue Chicken Salad Wrap

This recipe appeared in my email inbox one day a few weeks ago when it was hotter than, well, you know, and sounded so good for a hot day, that I shared the link to it on the Facebook page. The original recipe called for it to be served on just a few leaves of Bibb lettuce, but I thought it would be perfect for a wrap. Shredded lettuce on the bottom, topped with the chicken salad, a little chopped tomato and wrap and roll! Ramona, one of our Facebook readers, said she was making it with the addition of celery and pecans, and I agree - they both provide nice flavor and a little extra crunch.

The original recipe also called for parsley, but since I'm going through that "trying to learn to love cilantro thing" and planted some in my garden, I decided to use it the first time I made this chicken salad! Yep, by this posting, this is the third time I've made this barbecue chicken salad now.

Click Here to Read More & to Get Recipe »

Featured Reader Recipe: Southern Strawberry Cake with Coconut and Pecan

Take our well-loved, made from a mix strawberry cake, add the usual strawberries and strawberry gelatin, but bump it up a level with toasted pecans and coconut, and you've got one delicious dessert y'all!

Strawberry Coconut Pecan Cake

I think the heat wave across the country, and especially the drought we're experiencing here in the Coastal South, is making it pretty difficult for most of us to get in the mood for cooking, much less baking. I can't even seem to get focused for recipe development, and that's not like me! I mean you need only look here to see it's been a week between my posts.

And it is only June.

Have we been eating? Well, of course! But I'll be right up front and tell you it's been a lot of salads - mixed garden salads, salads with cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes, salads topped with store-bought rotisserie chicken or slices of deli turkey or ham. The Cajun went shrimping, so we had some boiled shrimp with corn, potatoes and smoked sausage, and macaroni salad using those leftover shrimp. Quick and easy skillet meals and even watermelon has been making an appearance already, even if they are Mexican melons.  Hey, you take what you can get. The other night, I kid you not... I had nothing but boiled corn on the cob for supper and there might have been a few too many carby snacks, like pretzels, tortilla chips and Chicken in a Biscuit crackers here and there too.

Click Here to Read More & to Get Recipe »

A hardy casserole of ground beef, seasoned with onion and bell pepper, some beans and corn, a little mixture of chili seasonings and topped off with rustic, cornmeal dusted biscuits.

Chuckwagon Casserole

No secret that I love casseroles - and yes, I love them any time of the year because they generally take little prep work and then go into the oven freeing up your time to do other things.  They are an easy way to get a filling and tasty meal on the table with not a lot of effort too.

I know a lot of people want to switch over to no-cook meals, main dish salads, sandwiches, and cooking outside when the summer heat kicks in, but my husband still likes a meal, no matter the season, and cooking outside is pretty rough on me with the heat. Thank goodness for the modern convenience of air conditioning is all I can say!

This is called a Chuck Wagon casserole because it's sort of an all in one meal and one reminiscent of what might have been prepared on the wagon trail, in a Dutch oven over a campfire. Ground beef, seasoned with garlic, onion and bell pepper, beans and corn, a mixture of chili seasonings and for mine, topped off with biscuits dusted with a rustic touch of cornmeal.  I would really have liked to have had the dozen biscuits, but I made do with what I had, which was a 10-count roll.

Click Here to Read More & to Get Recipe »