D-Feast Friday!

Alright... so I hear it is D-Feast Friday!

My recipe is for some truly southern-style cuisine...

Lo-Country Shrimp n Grits

You take some grits (I use Quaker) and get them to cookin on the stove (just use the instructions on the box).

Take about a pound of de-veined, peeled shrimp and put them aside.

Cut up 1 small onion.

Cube up some bacon or ham.

Grate 2-3 cloves of garlic.

Now... you open up a beer, and pour about 1/2 - 3/4 of it in a pan. (The rest is for the cook!) You'll also want to put a good bit of butter or margarine in the pan too. (In the south we refer to this as a butter beer sauce.) Then add your onion, bacon or ham, and garlic. Let all that cook down until the onion is soft and you have that good marriage aroma coming from your seasonings. Now your gonna add in your shrimp. You also want to add in a bit of pepper- some Cayenne pepper and a few red pepper flakes if you got em. Cook all this together until your shrimp are done and you have a nice little sauce that is cooking down.

Now... your grits are cooked and they are soft (I know most people don't know how to cook grits, but they shouldn't be hard!) Your gonna want to add some type of sharp white cheese to your grits... I usually use Havarti or white cheddar. You also need to add some salt and pepper to the grits... more pepper than salt. Once your grits are ready you can set them aside.

Now back to the shrimp... you need to take everything out of the pan but the sauce. Set the shrimp and stuff aside and turn up the heat on that sauce... Cook it down until you have a nice little reduction to serve.

Now to serve it all up... Get some big bowls...

Put a little sauce in the bottom of the bowl and then add your cheesy grits so that it looks like the grits are swimming in a pool of sauce. Next you pile on the toppings (shrimp, garlic, onion, and ham or bacon). Finally you garnish it with some nice parsley.

Serve it up with some beer or some good ole sweet tea, and you've got yourself one damn fine meal! :o)

Only a Southerner knows instinctively that the best gesture of solace for a neighbor who's got trouble is a plate of hot fried chicken and a big bowl of cold potato salad. If the neighbor's trouble is a real crisis, they also know to add a large banana puddin!