Bringing Back Sunday Dinner - Shrimp Étouffée

So today definitely had a Cajun feel to it. We started off with 'The Princess and the Frog' for starters. I love this movie! We dug a little deeper with Mama Odie…

Mama Odie, got mad love for this cartoon!

The we were listening to some King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band on my Pandora Playlist. We had all the windows open, and being in St. Louis we are close to the Mississippi River so it's sorta kinda like being close to New Orleans. It's 73 degrees in March, I'll take it.  Plus last night I was sitting at my mother in laws kitchen table looking thru an old Gourmet Magazine from 2007, and ran across 'Pat's Crawfish Étouffée' recipe, and had a severe hankering for some awesome étouffée. Seriously people, of all my favorite creole food, étouffée is my hands down all time favorite. I've never met an étouffée I didn't like. My butt, hips, and thighs are kinda saying the same thing too…

Ingredients:

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter

3 cups minced onion

1 Tbsp minced garlic

1 Tbsp fresh thyme

1 Tbsp all-purpose flour

1 cup chicken broth

1 Tbsp Cajun seasoning

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp hot sauce

1 lb crawfish tails (we used shrimp)

1/4 cup chopped green onions

2 Tbsp chopped parsley

Note my surprise when I looked and we ACTUALLY had this!

Took some time to prep, but here we go…

Melt your butter in a medium saucepan over moderate heat.

Add onion and garlic, and cook until onion is softened, about 5 minutes.

Add thyme and flour, and cook stirring for one minute.

Whisk in chicken broth, Cajun seasoning, paprika, and hot sauce.

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for two to three minutes.

Stir in crawfish tails, or in our case shrimp. 

Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally for 10 minutes. Stir
in the green onions and parsley before serving.  

While you wait try and keep the minions at bay…

Serve with steamed rice.

So I did look for a link for you all that you could just click on and et viola you'd have the recipe, but alas, I can't find one; just variations of this recipe from others. But I did switch out shrimp for crawfish, even though I love crawfish! It was just more expensive, and I didn't love it $3 more a lb expensive. Also I did add almost another 3/4 of a Tbsp of flour too to the recipe. It needed to be a little thicker so that's the only other tweak I made to this recipe. Also, note to you all, if you accidentally spill Cajun seasoning on your socked feet they will tingle oddly for an hour or so. Don't be alarmed. Yep, that's me, just call me Grace in the kitchen. I could have just taken them off, but then that would have been too easy, and who wants that! 

Enjoy this awesome recipe! Mitch said that this one was a keeper too! So far everything I've cooked he has decided that we can keep. I guess I'm slowly getting better at this whole cooking endeavor! Go me! Thank you Gourmet Magazine of December 2007 for making me look good!