By nature I’m a little bit of a pacifist.  I don’t really like to kill anything, even bugs, but I found my brief vegetarian phase very unfulfilling.  Plus, since gestational diabetes and family history have left me with a 50% chance of diabetes later in life, I think meat is always going to be an important part of my diet.  Seriously, I wonder what happens if you’re a life-long vegetarian and you get diabetes?  I really don’t know how you could ever get your blood sugar in line.

My sous-chef, or husband, made our cocktail sauce from a 50/50 mixture of ketchup and chili sauce, with a ton of horseradish and a bunch of fresh lemon.  I’ve been reading about homemade ketchups, and I will soon be working on that once I can decide which direction I want to go from the hundreds of recipes I’m reading.  I’ll post on that soon, and hopefully that will be the jumping off point for my own cocktail sauce, barbecue sauce and a host of other sauces all made from raw ingredients.

In Austin I used to be able to find frozen uncooked peeled and deveined shrimp, which definitely cuts down on the labor involved in a shrimp meal.  I haven’t seen them in Dallas, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t here, I probably haven’t looked very hard.  These were fresh 20-24 shrimp per pound Gulf of Mexico White Shrimp.  Delicious!  This amount serves 3 nicely or 2 adults and 2 kids.

Roasted Shrimp

1.5 lbs raw shrimp, peeled, deveined, tail off

olive oil

kosher salt

fresh ground pepper

Preheat oven to 400.  Place shrimp on a cookie sheet in a single layer.  Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Shake to coat.   Cook 12 minutes, until curly, pink, and opaque.

Lemon Basil Orzo

3/4 c. orzo

olive oil

kosher salt

juice from half a lemon

20 or more leaves fresh basil, cut into ribbons

3/4 of a tsp Murray River Salt

5 turns Fresh Ground Pepper

Bring a large sauce pan of water to a boil.  Add a generous pinch of kosher salt, about a tablespoon of olive oil, and orzo.  Boil 9 minutes or until al dente.  Drain.   Add another tablespoon of olive oil, lemon juice, basil, salt and pepper.  Stir and serve.

This recipe came from a Williams-Sonoma Simple Classics Cookbook, which appallingly, Williams-Sonoma seems to no longer sell. I have cooked the bulk of recipes from this book, and with the exception of a disastrous Baked Sea Bass with Fennel many years ago, this book is chalk full of solid dishes. I’ve made this recipe more times than I can count, and even have had better than average results from non-seafood eaters. In fact, I think this recipe may have inspired my friend Angela to introduce seafood to her diet.

I make my breadcrumbs from the end pieces of Orowheat Oatnut bread. I’ve linked to their site before, but after just checking again, their products page STILL seems to be under construction, so I’m not going to bother again. When we finish a loaf I throw the two end pieces in the freezer, and when I have a bunch of them, I grind them up in the Cuisinart and freeze the breadcrumbs for later use. It was a handy tip I picked up from an Austin Mama that fits in well with my efforts to reduce our food waste.

I’m also a bit of a horseradish snob. Or maybe just picky. We like the kind of horseradish we call kick-your-dog-hot. Not because we would possibly ever kick an animal, but because once, when making homemade horseradish, my eyes were watering so badly I tripped over the dog, resulting in my husband asking if the finished product would be kick-your-dog-hot. It stuck, even though my attempts at making homemade freshly prepared horseradish have not. After all the pain of grating, mine just wasn’t that hot. But, the Silver Springs Organic Brand Horseradish is the best I’ve found. Horseradish can be tricky to find in the grocery store, too. ALWAYS buy the refrigerated kind. It’s usually on a high shelf somewhere near the dairy/biscuits/butter/eggs section.

My sister found the most wonderful store for mushrooms in Dallas. Spiceman’s FM 1410 is full of fresh from the farm produce and always has an incredible mushroom selection. Plus they are full of tips. And unusually nice. People can often be so snotty about food and cooking, this is the absolute opposite experience. I may just have to move across town so I can hit the store more often.

breadcrumbs

1/2 lb small fresh mushrooms

1/4 c. butter

1 large or 2 small shallots, chopped

juice from 1 1/2 lemons

3 tbsps dijon mustard

1 1/2 tbsps prepared horseradish

1/4 freshly grated Parmesan Cheese

1/2 c. sour cream

salt and freshly ground pepper

5 sole fillets

Position a rack in the lower part of an oven and preheat the oven to 425. Butter a flameproof baking dish that will accommodate the fish fillets in a single layer without crowding.

Clean the mushrooms by brushing them with a paper towel; do not wash. Slice thinly and set aside.

In a saute pan over medium-low heat, melt the butter. Add the shallots and saute, stirring, for 1 minute. Raise the heat to medium, add the mushrooms, and cook, stirring and tossing, until the mushrooms are just wilted, 2-3 minutes. Set aside.

In a bowl, stir together the lemon juice, mustard, horseradish, Parmesan cheese, and sour cream until well blended. Add to the mushrooms, return to the heat, and bring just to a simmer. Stir to blend and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Rinse the sole fillets and pat dry. Place in the prepared baking dish i a single layer ad spoon the sauce over the fillets. Sprinkle the bread crumbs evenly over the top. Bake until the fish is opaque through-out when pierced with a sharp knife, 10-20 minutes, depending on thickness.

Serve at once.