New Orleans is all about food and I was down there
recently and I just pigged out on shrimp remoulade. I mean it was super, super hot,
icy cold shrimp smothered in remoulade sauce, which is an aioli, mayonnaise based
concoction that came over from France. They usually put it over some kind of
chopped green, garnish it with lemon slices and tomatoes, and just bring it
out to you as a chilled appetizer. And I don't think there's a finer dish to
serve any time of year as a first course or as, you know, a big party platter at a
buffet. What makes a remoulade, a remoulade,
is the mustard and the horseradish.
It's these flavors, in here, that separate out a good New Orleans style remoulade
from the others. In fact, we use two different types of mustard.
Got some celery.
A couple cloves of garlic, three eggs,
a little bit of Chesapeake Bay seasoning.
Some paprika.
Colonel Pabst, best Worcestershire sauce ever.
Some whole seed mustard.
Some sharp yellow cajun mustard, any mustard in the yellow
category will do. But if you have some from Louisiana it's gonna have a little
bit of sharpness and heat to it, it actually has a little more horseradish in it.
Speaking of horseradish, and chili sauce.
Vinegar.
Scallions.
This, is a remoulade sauce. Commander's Palace has had a history of
employing some of the greatest American chefs over the last 50 years and my
friend Jamie Shannon was the chef there, twenty-five years ago.
And sadly passed away, at way too young an age, and he taught me how to make this
remoulade, because I loved his the most. So this is a riff on his and every time I
make it I think of him. So Jamie, this is for you.
So let's poach our shrimp and we're gonna have a lot of flavor.
I've peeled, deveined, frozen my shells.
So I'm gonna put in a bottle of Summit Oktoberfest,
you know why? Because I live in Minnesota that's why.
And some celery, some onion.
This is one lemon, sliced and I'm just going to squeeze it and then scatter the slices.
I'm going to let this boil for about three or four minutes. I'm gonna
let those flavors go out in the water so that when I poach my shrimp in there, the
shrimp absorbs some of those flavors.
They cook quickly, but I like to stick
them in one by one and then give it a good stir. And the reason is, you're
adding so much cold product to the boiling water that it takes a while for
the thermal momentum of the pot to come back again. Now I want to be careful I'm
putting so much ice on this it's gonna almost stop them from cooking
immediately.
So I want to make sure that they are all cooked through, before I do this.
Iceberg lettuce is, what you serve this on.
But I love the bitter, fresh escarole.
Always taste your remoulade.
Such a tight recipe, needs absolutely nothing else.
And we're gonna let this, also be the dressing for the salad. So you literally
drench the shrimp in remoulade.
In the old days parsley with fancy garnish.
So let's garnish this with parsley.
Beautiful, beautiful quality of shrimp, but it tastes like shrimp should taste.
You can even pick up that celery and onion and the beer that it was
cooked in. And then the exterior of it, it just sucked in that Cajun seasoning so
you have built three layers of flavor just in the shrimp alone and then this
wonderful remoulade sauce.
This my friends, it's classic Americana, its culinary literacy at its finest.
And it's a dish that is going to be a part of your repertoire
and make you happy for a long, long time.