Shrimp, Mushroom, and Kale Scampi on Creamy Parmesan Polenta

Ooohh.... I know... sounds pretty fancy, right?

(Skip to the end for the recipe and ingredients list without the pre-ramble [sic])

Ok, so I bought some kale the other day because I keep hearing how it's this super awesome mega food that will cure all ailments and make you so healthy you'll say 'neeeeeigh'. Previously, I was a kale virgin. For other kale virgins who have no idea what it is, you probably won't be enticed when I tell you it's a leafy green and is in the same family as broccoli, cabbage, and brussel sprouts. Makes you want to run out and grab some, right? Don't tell your kids, it won't win you any points.

Anyway, I'm on this mom-kick of trying to get more greens in us and working on cooking rounded meals with more vegetables than I used to serve. Too many years of living like a bachelorette and thinking a proper meal could be; a box of KD, a box of hamburger helper, or a store-bought sauce dumped on a chunk of meat. It's hard to slowly get out of that mindset and make it 'normal' to include veggies into the dinner table and even harder to make them seem like some kind of amazing treat that is integral to the whole meal. I asked The Wiki Gods about the nutritional content of this magic vegetable, and they told me it's "very high in beta carotene, vitamin K, vitamin C, lutein, zeaxanthin, and reasonably rich in calcium." which all seems good and healthy sounding. Also, it has a magical compound found in a lot of similar greenish foods that some say is a cancer fighter. Who knows, really... but I'm sold.

Of course, when I picked up the kale I had zero idea what my intentions were as far as using it in a recipe. I figured at worst I would wilt it and stuff it beside/under something with maybe some olive oil and lemon juice like I've been doing with spinach recently. I was moderately surprised that when I approached the "greens" aisle of the store that I generally skip, there were only 3 bunches of kale squished in amongst the lettuce and bok choy. I wondered if it was because it was so awesome everyone was snatching it up? Was it because noone buys the stuff? Was this super old stock they were hoping some poor sucker would pick up? Beats me... but I was on a mission to try it, so I just grabbed the healthiest looking of the 3 and felt like I was doing something productive. I had shopping cart pride because I had almost entirely fresh produce. I'm super mom! Look at me go! I've got KALE in my cart! HAH!

Right... so I have some issues.

At any rate, it sat in my fridge for a few days hiding in my extra veggies basket (Even though I don't feel like I buy a lot of fresh produce, there is never enough room in my veggie drawer. So I have one drawer for veggies, one for fruit, and then I have a dollar store plastic basket on the bottom shelf in my fridge for veggie overflow, because they often take up a lot of surface area so the basket contains them)  and every time I looked down at the poor unused kale I felt a bit less like super mom. So I had a night where I realized that I had no meat thawed and it was getting late. I went poking in my freezer looking for something that would be a quick-thaw or freezer-to-oven dinner and instead found a stash of pre-cooked frozen shrimp! Yay! Now, let's be clear, I grew up on the coast and firmly believe that all seafood should be eaten as soon after it comes out of the ocean as possible, but seriously folks, I live in Edmonton, AB., there are dozens of countries in the world that have a smaller diameter than the distance to the closest ocean from here. So, like the Rolling Stones said, you can't always get what you want. But I do try sometimes, and I find I end up with ... frozen cooked shrimp I bought on sale.

Alright, so... shrimp might go with kale, right? Fish and greens often work well together, so with this inspiration, I went digging around on the interwebs and got some ideas from a few recipes I found and decided to use mushrooms (which I also had) because they're also kind of earthy and do it up scampi style. Scampi, by the way, is a bit of a misnomer since it refers to both a type of lobster and a style of cooking. I am referring, as most North Americans do, to the style of cooking that generally involves cooking shrimp in garlic butter and white wine... which... HOW CAN YOU GO WRONG THERE???.


So, one of the blogs I was looking at suggested serving his recipe on polenta, and I was further inspired! You see, not only was I a kale virgin, but I was a polenta virgin too. Seriously... never had it that I am aware of and most definitely have never cooked it. I did, however, have some cornmeal up in my cupboard that I sometimes use for breading chicken fingers and such. So I did a little research on that and decided I would just go with a simple unadorned recipe with only parmesan added since it has a rich flavour and I am still trying to use that tub that we bought at Costco a couple weeks ago.

Right then, let's get cooking. I did the polenta first, because then I could leave it to set up a bit while cooking the rest. Man that stuff absorbs water! The recipes I saw called for about 1 part cornmeal to 3 parts salted water, but that just didn't seem like enough so I added more water. I probably didn't need to do that... but I wasn't going for hard packed, just creamy. Anyway, you can pre-mix some of it in some water to avoid too many lumps, but with the amount of stirring you have to do, I imagine that it's probably unneccesary because as long as you stir it till your arms fall off you're probably going to be ok either way. Really just boil it and stir the heck out of it for 20-30 minutes depending on how much you panicked and added extra water at the beginning. If you stop stirring for more than about 20 seconds, it turns into a burbling swamp and boiling hot cornmeal splats out and hits you, also it starts getting stuck on the bottom of your pot. So just keep stirring. I really had no idea it was this easy. It was just like making cream of wheat and required about the same amount of babysitting and arm strength.

When you figure it's done, or your arms are tired, then take it off the heat and stir in a bunch of butter and parmesan. The quantities are in dispute, but since I love butter and have a a significant amount of fresh parmesan right now, I used about 1/4 cup of butter and about the same amount of parmesan. Probably closer to 1/2 cup of cheese but who's counting. Stir it all in until it melts and then dump it all into a bowl or dish which you buttered (if you're a real cook) or sprayed with aerosol butter flavoured grease (if you're me), and then toss it in the fridge to set up for a while. Basically the longer you let it sit, the longer it starts to become a jello-mold, so if you want to slice it then you need to let it sit for a few hours to cool through. If you like it kind of goopy, then you can serve it right from the pot or at any stage of the game, really. I went goopy ... mostly because of time.

Alright, so on to the rest of the meal. Here's the prep; hack up about 4 cloves of garlic, and a handful or two of mushrooms, cut the stems out of about 4 or 5 kale leaves and roughly chop them. You can slap chop your garlic and mushrooms if you are having one of those days and need to. It probably would have been easier to clean the kale before I chopped it, but either way, it seems you really have to rinse it well because the bunch I had was very dirty. Don't panic though, a little dirt is good for you, my one year old was sucking on fist-sized chunks of it and was as happy as a clam the other day. Plus, it's going to get cooked.

Right then. Heat up a pan to kinda hot (6ish, 7ish) and put some olive oil and butter in. I used about 2 tbsp oil and at least that much butter - probably more like 4tbsp, but who's counting. Put the garlic in and cook it until it smells like garlic heaven or until your family members complain, just don't burn it. Add the mushrooms and cook them for a bit until they're mostly cooked. This is a good time to put your shrimp in a colander or sieve and rinse them under cold running water for about 5 minutes to thaw them. Now, because I've never worked with it before, I blanched my kale for 3-4 min before adding it to the rest, but I probably didn't have to as it would have steamed nicely and blanching it does steal some nutrients. Wow is it ever a beautiful green and it holds it's texture and shape really well. Since I had pre-cooked and now thawed shrimp, and pre-blanched kale, I added everything to the hot pan and then poured a few glugs of white wine in and let it all simmer together happily for a few minutes. Long enough to boil off the booze, heat up the shrimp, and steam your kale if you didn't already. Yay, you're finished! Give your kids a 5 minute hand-washing warning and get it all plated.

So, to serve it, I globbed some polenta on a plate, spooned over some of the shrimp, and then squeezed some fresh lemon (a little zest in the sauce would have been nice in hindsight), drizzled a small amount of extra virgin olive oil over top of everything, and added ground pepper/salt to taste.

It should be noted that I am not a very good photographer, but hey, I got asked for pictures of my food, so keep in mind I don't have the mad skillz to make it look boo-tee-full. 

The Verdict:

I really loved this. The creamy polenta added a fantastic texture and flavour to the scampi dish. The kale was bright green and matched with both the shrimp and mushrooms. I will definitely make this again, possibly with scallops or fresh prawns to make it fancier, and a little lemon zest in the sauce. The rest of the family actually did well with this too. Hubby liked the flavours and was happy with it, the baby happily munched on kale and shrimp alike, and even the 3 year old consented to eat bits and pieces of the scampi - although she wasn't super into the polenta.

Ingredients:

polenta

• 1 cup cornmeal
• 3 cups water
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup fresh parmesan

scampi

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 - 4 tbsp butter
• 4 cloves garlic
• 5 - 10 mushrooms
• 4 - 5 kale leaves
• 1 bag pre-cooked frozen shrimp (about 340g size)
• 1/4 cup white wine, preferably dry
• juice & zest from half a fresh lemon
• 1 - 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• salt/pepper to taste

The recipe:

1. For the polenta, boil the cornmeal in salted water for around 20 minutes. Whisk it early to get the lumps out, and then don't stop stirring until it's thick and done
2. Take it off the heat and stir in the butter and parmesan until they are melted
3. If you would like solid polenta, pour it into a greased dish and refrigerate it for a few hours until cooled through, otherwise you can serve it from the pot.
4. For the scampi, dice the garlic and sautee it in oil/butter
5. Chop up the mushrooms and add them to the sautee
6. Rinse the kale well, remove stemps and roughly chop (pre-blanch if you like)
7. Thaw the shrimp in cold running water
8. When the mushrooms are almost cooked, add the shrimp, kale, zest, and wine
9. Cover and simmer for a few minutes until kale is steamed through
10. Spoon the scampi on to some polenta, drizzle with EVOO, zap with some lemon juice, sprinkle some salt and pepper on and then stuff it in your face.

Hamburger Quiche

So I've been trying to come up with new and different ways to use ground beef recently because it's cheap and I am broke... well that's a topic for another blog, but broke is a good word for now. Anyway, I often get inspiration from staring in my cupboards and/or freezer and thinking, "What do I have stuffed in a corner that needs to be used?" or I start with one idea and then it progresses from place to place to place.

So the other night I had a couple things going on in my brain... I had thought perhaps it would be a breakfast for dinner night because we had eggs, and then I remembered I had 3kg of ground beef sitting in my fridge that I needed to divide and freeze which I had picked up during the glory that was our recent Costco trip. So, eggs and ground beef it was! What the heck can you make from eggs and ground beef other than cheeseburger pie (which I had recently made) or some crazy random scramble? Usually at this point in my musings I ask the Google. The Google tells me a lot of things and I have a pretty good relationship with it. It tries not to steer me too far off base, but every once in a while gives me some shiny distractions to feed my (imagined) ADD.

On this occasion, the Google wasn't really being that helpful, so I went to the old standby allrecipes which, it turns out, was also not that helpful. The problem I was running into was that egg is used as a binding ingredient in almost all meatball, hamburger and meatloaf recipe out there which started making searching annoying. Anyway, I ended up going to the other old standby of staring into the freezer at which point I saw some pie shells that I had cleverly picked up for such an occasion and ... BLAMO! Inspiration hit me like a stack of quarters in a sock. There will be QUICHE TONIIIIGGGGHHHT! (please say that in your head in the voice of Inigo Montoya).

Alright, I have used this quiche recipe before with large success, so I took it as my starting point and then kinda meandered down the "hey this might taste good with that" path that often leads to culinary tasties being created in my kitchen.

First step - veggies. I'm thinking you can really go out on a limb with this, but I happened to have onion, mushroom, red pepper, and fresh baby spinach on hand. There are a lot of other things that would work just fine, but I'll list nifty variation ideas at the end. For now let's stick to what I actually did. I slap chopped. Yup. I do own a big food processor. I also own several knives, and am fairly talented at slicing and dicing food while managing to spare body parts. However, I was in a mood, and the slap chop - although it is certainly not the best product in the world - is most definitely therapeutic since you really have to ream on it to get it to work the way Vince would like you to think you can with one finger. Ok, so first I whacked an onion, several mushrooms and a red pepper (in stages, obviously... the slapability is severely limited by volume). Then tossed the onion in a more hot than medium pan which had a glurp or two of olive oil in it. Sauteed that for a bit - I'm not super sure why, but the real cooks on TV always give the onion a head start, so who am I to question - and after the onion was well on it's way, I carefully got the mushrooms and pepper successfully into the pan from off  of the cutting board without dumping half of it on the stovetop. Small victories, people. It's how I get through the day.

Alright, so... sauteed the veggies till they were mostly cooked then seasoned them with a little salt and pepper, turned the pan down a bit to just under medium, then put several large handfuls of spinach on top of the cooking veggies and put the lid on to wilt. If you are using fresh spinach, you want to use a LOT because it's good for you and will wilt down to almost negligible amounts. Now is a good time to preheat the oven to 375F or so.

A few minutes later, I got impatient and just stirred the spinach down into the veggies and dumped everything into a bowl for the time being. Pan back up to hot, and TSSSSSSSSSSS on goes the ground beef. Woohoo! Now the house starts smelling domestic! Nothing smells more like "dinner is cooking" to kids and a man than beef and onions being sauteed. Too bad I was making this mid-afternoon to reheat for dinner and I was alone to smell the domestication wafting around. Alright, so brown the beef. Don't burn it. Can you handle that? Good to hear. When the beef is brown it's time to take it off the heat and start assembling the quiches. If you like to be all crazy and willy-nilly then feel free to mix the beef and veggies together beforehand, but I always feel more chef-like when I layer things. Also, it makes for (imagined) OCD happiness. Alright then. I didn't pre-bake the pie shells because I'm lazy, but you can if you like... I think it will likely make them a bit crispier, but when you're using generic brand frozen pieshells, the quality of crust is not forefront.

The quantities I used were enough for 2 pieshells (one for now and one for freezing) so adjust accordingly. In each shell I spread a layer of veggies, a layer of beef, and then a lot of grated cheese. I was feeling like it might need a little sumthin-sumthin so I dotted small spoons of cream cheese all around the top before the cheddar layer. Also from our happy fun time at Costco, hubby had picked up an insanely large tub of flaked parmesan which I will be using for a while yet, so I dotted some of that around too. Now, for the quiche part. I actually used 8 eggs, but it was too much, so let's pretend I used 6 eggs. Beat them up with a whisk, poured in around a cup or so of milk and then beat it all together. If I had half and half or even coffee cream I would have used that, but I didn't, so milk had to do. I am not a fat cutter. Moderation! Next - pour the egg mixture fairly carefully over the pies. This can be a messy operation, so I always put the pieshells on a foil lined baking sheet because I always overestimate the filling and end up with egg spillage. It's not a big deal, just make sure there's something there to catch the overflow and you're fine.

Your oven should be ready - pop them in and set the timer for around 40 minutes. You know this one is done when it passes the toothpick test - jab a toothpick in the middle and if it comes out clean you're good to go - if it comes out with half cooked eggy bits stuck to it, it's not done yet. It should look something like this:

An inside view:

The verdict:
This was a very good base recipe and can be served as is or tweaked. There isn't a whole lot of super stimulating flavour going on here, but it is yummy and subtle in a comfort food kind of way without beating you over the head. The kids ate it, either the first time or the second time depending on which one. The adults enjoyed it too, it worked great for a "leftovers for lunch" meal.

The ingredients (enough for 2 quiches):

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• small onion
• 8 - 12 mushrooms (around 4-5 oz)
• a red pepper
• a few cups of fresh baby spinach
• a pound of ground beef
• 2 frozen pie shells
• 1.5cup grated cheddar
• 1/2 cup cream cheese
• 1/4 cup parmesan (real! not that crumbly powder nonsense)
• 6 eggs
• 1 cup milk (or cream)
• salt
• pepper

The short version:

1. Dice the veggies
2. Sautee the veggies, onion first. 
3. Wilt the spinach into the veggies in covered pan.
4. Put the veggies aside for a few minutes, turn on the oven to 375 and brown the beef in the pan
5. Layer the veggies in the frozen pie shells
6. Layer the beef on top of the veggies
7. Layer various cheeses on top of the meat
8. Beat the eggs and milk
9. Slowly pour the egg mixture over all the other ingredients
10. Bake for about 40 minutes until the toothpick test is passed.

Variation ideas:

• Tex-mex it up - you could easily put some corn and salsa into the veggie mix, some chillies or jalapenos if you're brave (or Mexican) too. I've successfully used that nacho flavoured cheese-like chip dip stuff in similar recipes too, possibly in place of cream cheese here
• Tomatoes in the veggies might add a little twist - try Italian seasoned diced tomatoes - add some tomato paste if you really want a lot of flavour (tomato paste tip: I only ever use a couple of tablespoons at a time, so I spoon the rest out of the tin about 1tbsp at a time on to cling wrap and make little packages, then just pop them in the freezer so I have it on hand when I need it)
• Different cheeses - All hard melty cheeses would work well, cottage cheese instead of cream cheese, even blue if you wanted to go that direction.
• Different veggies - anything you have, really. Carrots, corn, peas, any greens, chopped green beans, mushroom varieties, etc.