Creole Shrimp and “Rice”

This is quite the uncomplicated recipe, but it ends up being awesome due to a simple trick of resting it.

Ingredients

1. 20 ounces of raw and peeled jumbo shrimp
2. 1 medium green pepper chopped
3. 1 medium onion chopped
4. 3 8″ stalks of celery chopped
5. 1 tablespoon of coconut oil
6. 2 tablespoons dried lemon peel
7. 1 large cauliflower, riced
8. 2 tablespoons salt, yes it seems like a lot, but wait for it
9. 2 tablespoons minced garlic
10. 1 tablespoon “Penzey’s Cajun” spice mix.  (Now, we use pretty much only stuff from Penzey’s, but I assume that any Cajun spice would work for this.  You can get this particular spice here.  It’s delightful.  We do not receive any compensation for hawking their stuff by the way.)

Recipe

1. Take the onion, pepper, and celery and put in a skillet with the salt and oil.  Sweat this on medium heat until the onions are translucent, should take about 10 minutes or so.  (This is why you are using so much salt, when you cook salt without water, the lack of alkilinity in the mixture causes the salt to break down into its component minerals, thus seems less salty.)
2. Add the lemon peel and garlic at this point and turn to medium high heat.
3. Add the shrimp and remaining spices.  Give a couple of good tosses to coat it all and cover for about 2 minutes.  Repeat this process until the stuff is all cooked through, mainly the shrimp.
4. Remove all of this from the pan and put into a bowl or dish and cover with foil for about 15 minutes.  Everything should come down to room temperature.  This is a good secret in a lot of shrimp cooking.  It will finish cooking and not be rubbery.
5. While that is happening, take the entire riced cauliflower and put in the same skillet (hope you used a big enough one, if not you have an extra pan to wash, huh.) Increase the heat to high stirring often, the goal is to heat the cauliflower without losing the crunch and without it becoming soggy, this should not really take more than 5 or so minutes.
6. Take of the heat and combine the shrimp mixture with the cauliflower.
7. Now, you have two choices and they depend upon how big your dish and skillet are.  I did not mix it all together in the skillet because I had a really big bowl.  I mixed it in that.  If your skillet is big enough, you can mix it there.

We made this for a dinner for a couple of friends and it was a big hit.  The amazing thing about it is that it needs 2 tablespoons of oil and 20 ounces of shrimp and amply fed 5 people (counting myself twice).  That means that each person took in 1/2 tablespoon of oil, 4-5 ounces of shrimp, and 2-2.5 cups of veggies here.  That’s awesome.  And I do not want to hear about how it’s not “Creole” it’s Cajun blah blah blah.  There is citrus and slight caramelization on the veggies, not cajun things.  Don’t give me any crap people   🙂  Please try it out and let me know what you think of it.