Shrimp Scampi and Grits, Plus a Lesson in Project Management

If there’s one thing that Southerners and Italians agree on, it’s cornmeal. Grits are a symbol of the South, and polenta is a staple of northern Italy. The exact difference is unclear, but that won’t stop eyebrows being raised (or worse) if you try to use one in place of the other–if there’s a second thing Southerners and Italians agree upon, it’s getting upset when some upshot tries to mess with their dishes. We’re going to make everyone mad, then, by taking coastal Southern icon shrimp and grits and mashing it up with Italian-American classic shrimp scampi. To appease the angry masses, though, I’ve got some tips on how to plan things out so you can do 2 hours of cooking in just half the time.

Guava Cheesecake Tart

Cuban pastelitos have long been my favorite thing to make with guava paste. They were also, incidentally, the only thing I knew how to make with guava paste. They’re super straightforward: just squares of puff pastry folded over bits of guava paste and cream cheese and baked. Eat a few with a coffee¹ and pretend you’re in Miami.² The cream cheese and crust made me think of cheesecake, though, and long story short I’m now up to two guava paste recipes to choose from.

Component: Tart Dough

You can go far with a good tart dough. The sturdier, more European cousin to pie dough (call it pâte brisée if you want to sound sophisticated or possibly pretentious), it comes out with a bit more structure than a flaky pie crust, able to handle a wet, heavy filling and still remain sturdy enough that you can pick up a slice and eat it out of hand. It’s a recipe you can do a lot with, able to take both sweet fillings like pastry cream or savory ones like quiche. The most surprising and least sophisticated part of this particular recipe, though, is that its existence is directly attributable to Guy Fieri.

Japanese Curry Pot Pie with Miso-Cheddar Biscuits

Consider the pot pie. The filling is basically a stew with meat (often chicken) and vegetables (peas, carrots, onions, potatoes, etc.) in a thick, flour-thickened gravy. It’s warm, thick, and comforting.

Consider Japanese curry. It’s basically a stew with meat (often chicken) and vegetables (peas, carrots, onions, potatoes, etc.) in a thick, flour-thickened gravy. It’s warm, thick, and comforting.

See where I’m going with this?

Sweet Potato Red Curry

I’m not generally one to keep many premade sauces or spice mixes around, but I make an exception for Thai curry paste. As long as you have a can of paste, some coconut milk, and almost any kind of vegetable or meat, you’re a quick simmer away from dinner. This version takes things in a slightly pretentious, definitely nontraditional direction: we’re using sweet potatoes as our vegetable, optionally braising some pork belly in it, pureeing it until smooth, and topping it with a heap of garnishes.

Component: Fried Shallots

There are no quantities given for this recipe, because you can never make enough fried shallots. If I made a claim like “makes 1 cup”, you would leave angry comments about how you only got half a cup at the end.¹ This isn’t because the recipe is flawed; it’s because when you make fried shallots right, you’ll eat them like chips before they can make their way into the final recipe.

Pulao Stuffed Squash

A normal person might dine at a restaurant and have a couple dishes they especially enjoyed. If they were interested in Afghan food, they might go to The Helmand in Cambridge and be impressed by kaddo bourani, a dish of sweet and savory baked pumpkin, and palou kabuli, a heap of basmati rice studded with julienned carrots, raisins, and chunks of lamb. If a normal person were of a culinary persuasion, they might later search for recipes online and try to recreate those dishes. If that person were me, though, and not normal, they might decide to experiment and combine the two into something new. The results aren’t normal either, but they are delicious.

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Halva

It might not look like it, but this originated as an attempt to make a homemade Reese’s cup. You might think, “isn’t that just peanut butter covered in chocolate?”, and you’d be right, in the same way that a baguette is just flour mixed with water.

The peanut butter center of a Reese’s cup is slightly dry and crumbly and much sweeter than plain peanut butter. This made me think of halva, the slightly dry and crumbly candy made from tahini (sesame seed paste) and a sugar syrup.¹ Halva is actually quite easy to make, especially if you know the basics of candy making, and with a few modifications we can give it a chocolate-peanut butter twist.