Shrimp with Herbed Olive Oil #PantryInsiders

This is the first of a series of articles I'm writing for Pompeian, makers of olive oils and vinegars. Right up my alley. I go through olive oil like it grows on trees.

hehe.

Pompeian has three oils in its Varietals Collection, which are oils made from a single variety of olive. I chose to work with the Picholine, since it's an olive I'm familiar with, but I've never tried a picholine olive oil.

The other two oils in the collection are Arbequina and Koroneiki.

One cool thing about these single-source oils is that you can look up the origin of the oil, including the mill, the country, and the harvest date. All you need is the lot number from the bottle. Or use your smart phone and scan the QR code on the bottle.

Mine came from Morocco.

Even better is that these oils are affordable - you're not going to have to dip into the college fund to make a salad - they sell for about $6.99 for a 16-ounce bottle, but I've seen them locally for less.

The picholine was described as "a medium-bodied oil with a green fruitiness, hints of herbs and a pleasing balance of bitterness, great for meats and sauces." So it was the middle-ground between the other two. I tasted it and started brainstorming. I wanted a recipe where you could taste the oil, but not just oil drizzled over something.

I decided to pair it with shrimp. And, I've got two options for you.

This recipe takes advantage of parsley stems - the part you're likely to throw away for other recipes. You don't have to use the stems, but if you bought parsley for another recipe, you might as well use stems for this.

Otherwise, use leaves and stems of about 1/4 of a bunch of parsley. Eyeball it - this doesn't need to be exact.

Shrimp with Herb Oil (or mayo!)

1/2 cup Pompeian Picholine olive oil, divided
2 cloves garlic, peeled
Stems from 1 large bunch parsley
12 extra-large shrimp, peeled and cleaned
Salt, to taste
1/4 cup prepared mayonnaise (optional)
Lemon juice (optional)

Heat 1/4 cup of olive oil on gentle heat in a nonskillet add the garlic and cook, stirring as needed. until the garlic is cooked and soft. It's fine if the garlic browns a little, but don't let it burn. If it does, start over.

Pour the oil and garlic into your food processor add the parsley and the remaining 1/4 cup of olive oil and a generous pinch of salt. Process until the mixture is as smooth as you can get it to be.

Strain the mixture through a fine strainer and discard the solid bits - we're just after the flavored oil. Taste and add more salt, if desired.

Heat the skillet again with the residual oil - you can add more if you think you need it, but you shouldn't need more than a teaspoon or so.

Cook the shrimp in the skillet, turning them over when cooked on one side, until just cooked through.

Serve warm, drizzled with the herb oil. Drizzle with a bit of lemon juice, if you like.

Shrimp with Herb and Olive Oil Mayo

These shrimp, served cold, are excellent with a green herb-olive oil mayo. Here's how.

Put the 1/4 cup of prepared mayonnaise in a small bowl. Drizzle the flavored oil into the mayonnaise, whisking to incorporate it.

If you add it slowly and keep whisking, the oil will emulsify into the mayonnaise and it will stay thick, rather than thinning out.

Taste, after you've added two tablespoons of the flavored oil and add more oil, if desired - how much you add is totally up to you. Add more salt, if needed. You can also add a bit of lemon juice, if you like.

Serve the mayonnaise with chilled shrimp.

If you make more mayonnaise than you need, you can thin it with a bit of buttermilk or or milk and use it as a salad dressing or drizzle over vegetables.

This post is sponsored by Pompeian as part of the #PantryInsiders program.

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Shrimp with Egg Yolk Sauce #ShrimpShowdown

Have you ever been to a Teppanyaki restaurant? One of the signature dishes is shrimp with a secret egg yolk sauce. It almost seems like cheese - but it's not. instead, it's a relative of mayonnaise. Or, technically, I guess it's a type of mayonnaise, since it's essentially emulsified egg yolks and oil.

Here, I decided to veer away from the Teppanyaki serving style and served the shrimp on a bed of spinach. Then I drizzled the whole thing with some extra lemon juice - lemon goes perfectly with both shrimp and spinach - and it was a very simple meal.

The secret sauce can be made in advance and refrigerated until needed, and you can peel and clean and butterfly the shrimp ahead of time, too. So when you're ready to cook, it's really fast.

To make the portioning of the sauce a little easier, I used a pastry bag, but you can dollop it on with a spoon, if you like. The sauce is really rich, so don't get carried away. Or, just eat more spinach to compensate.

Annato seeds can be found at specialty spice shops and at some ethnic markets or in the ethnic section of your grocery store. You might find the labeled at achiote seeds. Make sure you get the actual seeds and not the powder or paste. They look like little brick-red rocks and turn the oil a bright yellow-orange color.

Be careful - the oil will stain.

As far as the spinach, as much as I'm a fan of using fresh vegetables as much as possible, sometimes frozen spinach makes more sense. A bunch of spinach at the grocery store or farmer's market cooks down to nothing. A pound of frozen spinach is relatively substantial. And, it's already clean, so you don't need to deal with washing the grit off the spinach leaves. One of my least favorite kitchen tasks.

This post is sponsored by OXO and the NFI Shrimp Council. For my participation, I received a selection of OXO tools and enough shrimp for several different recipes. There's a list of participating bloggers after the recipe, and a chance to win some amazing goodies for yourself, including the same tools I received, and a $100 gift card.

Shrimp with Egg yolk Sauce

For the sauce:

1 cup mild-flavored vegetable oil
2 tablespoons annato seeds
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
Pinch of salt
2 egg yolks

For the shrimp:
12 extra-large shrimp, peeled, deveined, and butterflied
1 tablespoon olive oil

For serving:
1 pound frozen chopped spinach, cooked
Lemon juice, as needed
Lemon wedges, for serving

To make the annatto oil:
The first step of this process is to make the annatto oil. You probably won't use the full cup of oil, but once you have it, you can use it for other purposes, so there's no problem with having extra on hand. If you don't want any extra, you can halve it - use 1/2 cup of oil and 1 tablespoon of seeds, and if you need more oil, use plain vegetable oil.

Put the oil and seeds in a small saucepan and heat gently. You don't need to boil the oil, and above all, you don't want those seeds to blacken. Just get the oil hot, stir once in a while, then turn off the heat and let the seeds steep until the oil has cooled. Strain the seeds out and keep the oil.

To make the egg yolk sauce:
Whisk the egg yolks in a medium bowl until they lighten in color. This step might seem frivolous, since you're not adding anything to the eggs. But trust me, if you don't beat the oil well, the oil will never emulsify. You can do this with an electric mixer or stick blender if you like.

Add the oil, a little bit at a time, whisking like crazy as you go. The oil should incorporate into the yolks and you should see it thicken.

If you add the oil too fast and the mixture separates, you can beat one more yolk separately and then add the broken mixture to the new yolk, slowly.

When you've got about 1/2 cup of oil beaten into the yolks, add the lemon juice and salt and continue whisking (at this point, I think the whisk is a better tool, so even if you started with an electric mixer, I suggest you finish by hand.

Keep whisking, and the mixture will thicken until it's almost the consistency of Velveeta. You can continue adding oil, if you like, but I preferred the higher yolk-to-egg ratio. Taste and add more salt or lemon juice, as desired.

If you're not cooking the shrimp right away, refrigerate this until needed.

The great thing about shrimp is that even if it's frozen, you're not too far away from cooking. If you didn't think about putting some in the refrigerator to thaw, just let it thaw in cold water. The bowl and strainer OXO provided was perfect for this. For a smaller amount of shrimp, the silicone steamer in any handy bowl or container works just as well. Since it's flexible, you can make it fit into whatever containers you have handy.

To finish the dish:
For a quick video on how to clean shrimp using the OXO shrimp cleaning tool, click here. Once the shrimp is deveined and peeled, butterfly them by cutting through the top side of the shrimp (the top of the curve, opposite the legs) almost all the way through, then flatten them out.

Heat the olive oil on medium heat in a saute pan that has a cover. (Meanwhile, cook the spinach, as desired. I microwaved mine until just cooked through and still bright green.)

Have the egg yolk sauce ready, along with your lemon juice (OXO provided a wooden reamer to make this task easy). Have a cup or small container on hand, with about 1/4 cup of water. You could also mix half water and half white wine, for a little extra flavor.

When the oil is hot, place the shrimp, cut-side up, in the pan, then top each with a small dollop of the egg yolk sauce (or pipe a line down the center using a pastry bag). Pour 1/4 of water into the pan and cover. Cook until the shrimp are cooked through - check after about 30 seconds - and cook just as long as you need to.

Some (or all) of the shrimp might curl a bit as they cook.

Place the shrimp on top of the spinach and drizzle with lemon juice. Serve warm with extra slices of lemon.

Want more shrimp in your life?

The following bloggers all have shrimp recipes, sponsored by OXO:

A Kitchen Addiction
A Zesty Bite
Betsy Life
Bonbon Break
Cherished Bliss
Chocolate Moosey
Coconut and Lime
Cookistry
Created by Diane
Everyday Maven
Foxes Love Lemons
Garnish with Lemon
girlichef
Growing up Gabel
Healthy Delicious
Home Cooking Memories
Jeanette's Healthy Living
Julie's Eats and Treats
Kirbie's Cravings
Lemons for Lulu
My Man's Belly
Natasha's Kitchen
Noble Pig
Peanut Butter and Peppers
Peas and Crayons
Sarah's Cucina Bella
So How's It Taste?
Taste Love and Nourish
That Skinny Chick Can Bake
Wonky Wonderful

Still not enough shrimp?

All of the  #ShrimpShowdown posts will be featured on a shared Pinterest board on both the OXO and Eat Shrimp Pinterest pages - be sure to check them out! Also, each post will be added to a photo album on the OXO Facebook Page and the Eat Shrimp Facebook Page.

Go check them out and share your favorites with your friends and fans!

Want to enter to win?

The photo shows the tools I received, which are the same ones YOU CAN WIN. The bowl and colander set at the back comes with a lid for the bowl that's not shown in the picture.

AND - there's also a gift card, for a total value of $180. Here's the list:

Shrimp Cleaner
Flexible Kitchen & Herb Snips
Silicone Steamer
Wooden Lemon Reamer
3 Piece Bowl and Colander Set
12" Tongs with Silicone Heads
$100 Visa Gift Card from the NFI Shrimp Council

Enter with the widget below.

If it doesn't load immediately, give it it a few seconds.

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Three-Pepper Shrimp and Pasta

I love it when an idea comes together. I wanted to make a shrimp and pasta dish, but I didn't want to go with the usual tomato sauce. But I wanted it to be colorful. So, I turned to my good friend, roasted red peppers.

With the red and the green, this is a pretty festive dish, and perfect for a holiday or pre-holiday meal with the typical colors of Christmas.

In the summer when peppers are plentiful and cheap, I roast my own, but in winter, I'm perfectly happy to buy them. Luckily, they're a lot more plentiful these days than back when you could only buy them in tiny jars.

You might think that 1/4 cup of olive oil is a lot, but think about it - there's pretty much no other fat here, and it's four servings. That's only 1 tablespoon of oil per serving, and you have to figure that there will be some left in the bottom of the bowl or the pot. There's probably more oil in the salad dressing that you're slathering on your lettuce. Or more butter on your toast.

If you wanted to, you could make this with twice as much pasta to stretch it a bit, but I liked this ratio of shrimp and vegetables to the pasta. Don't get me wrong - I love pasta. But I also love shrimp.

This is a great dish when you don't have a lot of time to cook - everything cooks pretty quickly, so you can have everything done in the time it takes to cook your pasta. To make it an even more convenient after-work meal, you can have the vegetables prepped ahead of time, so you can just throw them in the pan.

I used frozen, peeled, medium-sized tail-off shrimp, but fresh would be wonderful. However, I live pretty far from oceans here, so the "fresh" shrimp at most places is frozen shrimp that has been thawed. Or, it's insanely expensive it it really is fresh.

Frozen shrimp is just fine with me. You can toss it in the pan frozen, or thaw first - either way works with a slight change in directions.

For a more upscale meal, you could opt for larger shrimp. Like, you know, if you were serving this on Christmas Eve.

This post was sponsored by Carapelli, and I used their Extra Virgin Olive Oil for this dish. Check out the GIVEAWAY after the recipe.

Three-Pepper Shrimp and Pasta
Makes 4 servings

1/4 cup Carapelli Extra Virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, sliced into thin half-moons
1 green pepper, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced or put through a garlic press
Pinch of red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
Generous pinch of salt
1 cup roasted red bell peppers, roughly chopped
10 ounces frozen peeled, tail-off shrimp
1/2 pound uncooked thin spaghetti, cooked al dente

Heat the oil in a large saute pan until it's warm - but you don't want it smoking hot. Add the onion and green pepper and stir. Add the garlic, pepper flakes, marjoram, and salt. Stir again. Cook, stirring as needed until the vegetables are almost cooked through. Add the red peppers.

If you're using frozen shrimp, add them now and cook until they're thawed and beginning to cook. If you're using thawed or fresh shrimp, add the shrimp and al dente pasta at the same time. Cook until the shrimp are cooked through and the liquid has been mostly absorbed. If the pan becomes dry and the shrimp aren't quite done, add a bit of the pasta cooking water and continue cooking.

Serve hot.

This post is sponsored by Carapelli through Virtual Potluck, a fun group of bloggers that you really ought to meet! I received product to use and compensation for creating the recipe, but all words are my own.

Want to WIN?

Carapelli is giving away three of their olive oils to six lucky winners. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Shrimp and Grits, my way

I love shrimp and grits.

I love shrimp without grits, and I love grits without shrimp. Put them together, and I'm in nirvana. I don't know why it took me so long to discover shrimp and grits (possibly because I grew up in the midwest), but now I'm hooked.

But here's the deal. Since shrimp and grits isn't a traditional food for me, I'm more than wiling to mess around with the ingredients a bit. I made these a little bit spicy, but I also added some yellow squash from the farmer's market. Just because.

Makin' the Grits

For the grits, I used some pre-made polenta that I received from Freida's Specialty Produce. Normally, you'd slice and fry that polenta, but I decided I wanted a soft polenta. It's my favorite.

So I cut it in chunks, put it in a bowl, added water, and heated it in the microwave. When it was soft, I broke it up and mashed it a bit. Added more water, heated again.

When it was un-lumpy, I added enough water to get it to the "soft polenta" texture, then I tossed in about 1/4 cup of shredded gruyere cheese, stirred it again, then heated it to melt the cheese. Stirred one last time and served.

MMmmmmm. So good.

And now for the Shrimp

So, let's talk about these ingredients for a second, shall we? The bulb onion are like scallions that have started growing the onion part. The one I used was probably about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. You can use a few scallions, or about 1/4 of a regular onion if you don't have bulb onions. Or, if you like, you can use a lot more onion. It's not science, here.

The mini sweet peppers are about the size of jalapenos or big habaneros, but they're sweet like regular bell peppers. They were on sale and I bought a whole lot of them. A regular bell pepper would be just fine.

The vodka doesn't really add flavor to the sauce, but you know about the pasta sauce with vodka, right? You don't taste the vodka there, either, but the alcohol brings out flavor in tomatoes that you wouldn't get otherwise. Or that's the theory.

Peak 7 Vodka is a new micro distillery in Denver. I received some sample from them to try. There will be cocktails later. But for now, I decided to use it in a recipe. Because I'm wacky like that.

Shrimp 'n Polenta

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 bulb onion, white and tender green parts. quartered lengthwise and sliced thinly
1 clove garlic, diced
1 jalapeno, diced
8 mini sweet bell peppers, quartered, seeded, and sliced thinly
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 large can (28 or 32 ounces, depending on brand) diced tomatoes
2 tablespoons vodka (I used Peak 7, a local brand)
3 small yellow squash, sliced in thin rounds
2 pounds raw shrimp, shelled and deveined

Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed pan. Add the onion, garlic, jalapeno, sweet pepper, and salt. Cook, stirring as needed, until the vegetables are softened.

Add the tomatoes and vodka and cook, stirring as needed, until the tomatoes cook down a bit - you want a fairly thick sauce. It will get more liquidy when the squash and shrimp show up.

Add the squash and shrimp and cook until the shrimp are just opaque. Don't over cook.

Serve the shrimp over the grits. Or if you like, serve them separately so people can serve themselves.

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Fast and Easy (and Delicious) #SuperFresh™ Seafood

Thank you to Bumble Bee SuperFresh™ for sponsoring this article. Find the new Bumble Bee SuperFresh™ entrées in your area by visiting: http://bumblebeesuperfresh.com/buy

I've heard so many people say that seafood is best "right off the boat." Those people live near coastlines. I live near mountains. Far from any coast. But the absolute next-best thing is properly prepared and frozen seafood. And in some cases, it's the best option, even if you live sorta-near a coast.

I mean, fresh fish (or shellfish) doesn't stay fresh all that long, so unless you're building a bonfire on the beach to cook what was just caught, your fish is losing freshness every minute that ticks away.

Bringing fresh fish home from the store and chucking it in the refrigerator to cook the next day doesn't help it one little bit.

Commercial freezing technology has improved so much since the olden days when freezing was a terrible thing to do to any food. So, yeah, frozen seafood is pretty darned good these days.

So when the nice folks at Bumble Bee® offered to send me a variety of their new Bumble Bee SuperFresh™ entrees, for sure I wanted to give them a try. Because not only are these properly frozen, they're complete fish recipes.

Can I be brutally honest here? Fish is one of my top "I need something fast that I don't have to think about" dinners. It cooks so fast, and you can cook it from its frozen state. So no need to think about it too far in advance.

The downside to using fish as my last-minute meal is that I'm not at my most creative right about then. So I grab whatever seasoning looks good, maybe some lemon. And it is what it is. It's good enough, but it's not the best I could do if I thought about it for a while.

That's where these Bumble Bee SuperFresh™ entrees really shine, because the thinking part is all done. Seasoning is done. You just follow some simple directions and you have a danged good dinner.

Which gives you a little time to think about a side dish or relax with a cocktail.

Did I say cocktail? We'll get to that in a minute.

But first a side dish that pairs well with just about any fish dish you can imagine. It's lightly lemony, freshly herby, with color and texture and vegetables. What more could you ask for? I paired it with the Spicy Shrimp Romesco for dinner.

One more confession? My number one side dish with fish is rice. It's simple. I can throw it in my rice cooker. And then I have white rice to go with my seafood. It's not the prettiest plate in the world.

Since I didn't have to fuss much with the entree, I whipped up a colorful pasta side using tri-color orzo and some bright vegetables. It's like edible confetti.

If you can't find tri-color orzo, regular orzo is fine. The one I used had white(ish), light salmony-orange, and pastel army-green pasta. I've seen some at the farmer's market with more brilliantly-colored pasta that would be even more interesting.

Confetti Orzo

1 cup tri-color orzo
2 ears fresh corn
1/2 medium onion
1 red bell pepper*
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
Several grinds black pepper
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon thinly sliced fresh chives

Cook the orzo in boiling salted water until al dente, then drain. You can do this ahead of time and rinse with cold water to keep it from sticking.

While the pasta is cooking, prepare the vegetables. Cut the corn from the cobs and discard the cobs. Dice the onion into pieces about the same size as the corn. Core the bell pepper and dice into pieces about the same size as the corn.

Melt the butter in a pan on medium heat and add the onion. Cook, stirring as needed, until it begins to soften and become translucent. Add the salt, pepper, bell pepper, and corn. Cook, stirring as needed, until the bell pepper barely begins to soften.

Add the cooked pasta, and stir to combine. Add the lemon juice and chives, give it another stir, and take it off the heat. Serve hot.

*I used parts of several peppers - red, orange, and yellow - for more color. You can use one pepper, if you prefer.

Cocktail Time!

Moscoto wine is becoming one of my favorites. It's not super-sweet, but sweet enough. I particularly like the sparkling versions. They seem so festive. And it's inexpensive enough that you can mix it with fruit juices or use it in cocktail recipes without feeling like you're ruining a fancy varietal wine.

In this case, I decided to do a play off the mimosa, made with champagne. Or even a bellini, made with prosecco. The idea is the same - sparkling wine and fruit juice. The moscato wine is light and fresh and easy to drink (and perfect for summer). and the citrus is always a good match for seafood.

Moscato Mimosa

Orange-pineapple juice, cold
Moscato wine (sparkling preferred), cold
Maraschino cherry (optional)

Fill your favorite sparking-wine drinking glass about 1/4 full with juice. Top with the wine. Add the cherry, if you like.

Serve.

If you prefer, you can change the ratio to 50-50, or even use 3/4 juice and 1/4 wine. It's up to you. And that cherry? Completely optional.

And NOW for something fishy!

But you're getting no recipe. Because these entrees really are complete out of the package. The fish entrees slide into parchment bags to cook en papillote in the oven for about 20 minutes (more or less, depending on the variety) and can be served in the parchment or removed for plating.

The shrimp cook in just a few minutes (about six minutes, total) on the stovetop.

The funniest thing was my husband's reaction to the first entree I served - the tilapia with garlic. He was surprised when I told him that I didn't add anything at all to the fish - that it came with the seasoning and it tasted so typically like something I would make and serve - even to company.

I was surprised how fresh the basil tasted when we sampled the salmon with garden pesto. I'm betting most folks wouldn't realize that it was frozen along with the fish. Really impressive.

Even better, the ingredient list on the entrees are devoid of chemicals, preservatives, or things that I wouldn't have in my own pantry. Nothing scary or weird. Just normal stuff. If you're concerned about the sustainability of the fisheries your seafood comes from, the Bumble Bee SuperFresh™ seafood is certified by third-party certifying organizations. Well, okay then.

The ingredients for the Spicy Shrimp Romesco are shrimp, butter, vine-ripened tomatoes, red wine vinegar, tomato powder, extra virgin olive oil, white wine, garlic, shallots, cayenne pepper, parsley, red pepper, and sea salt. See, perfectly normal stuff!

It was pretty simple to cook, just toss it in a nonstick pan, turn on the heat, cook for four minutes, then drain the liquid and add the flavored butter. When the butter was melted - two minutes more - it was done.

I haven't tried all of the entrees yes, but I've been really pleased with the ones I have sampled. I still have salmon with garlicky black pepper and extra virgin olive oil; tilapia with lemon, pepper, and herbs; and lemon shrimp with garlic and herbs.

For sure I'll be looking for these at the local stores when I've finished them off, so I have on hand for quick and easy meals.

Bumble Bee SuperFresh™ gave me free product and said they'd pay me to blog about it IF I liked it. I do!

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