Best Shrimp Cocktail EVER!

Reason 1,001 I love my husband!  Holy cow, he made the best shrimp cocktail I have ever had INCLUDING RESTAURANTS!  But you’ll just have to read through my post to get there!

Reason 1,002, 1,003, and 1,004 reasons I also love my husband:

1,002:  He took me to a restaurant supply store!

1,003:  He took me to the Japanese grocery store (where I finally picked up kobacha!)   I found it Maggie! 😀

1,004:  He took me to Eurofresh, one of my other favorite grocery stores!  (Two grocery stores in one day – how lucky am I!)

And now on to reason 1,005.   He made me breakfast!  Two eggs, taco meat, cheese and a slice of toasted dark rye with a shmear of butter.  It was delicious!

I woke up Hannah at 9:30 to see if she wanted to hit the road with us.  The bus was leaving at 10:00 and since she didn’t have to work until late this afternoon, she got up 😀  A 45 minute drive later and we arrived!

Yeah, that’s right – everything for a professional kitchen!

I could have stayed all day!  But other than my pizza peel, I think my next favorite thing I got was my baguette mold!  I am planning on making homemade bread for the boys sausage and beef sammies for the first part of football Sunday.  I also got some squirt bottles, a shrimp deveiner, some bamboo skewers (100 for .89 cents!)  and some kick ass chili mix.

I also bought a big plastic container with a lid, to hold my Artisan bread in the fridge.  The bucket was $2.99 and the lid was $1.39!

We then headed to lunch.  Siegelman’s Deli.  This is our third or fourth trip and it is always so good!  I still got my Irving – open face corned beef sandwich with sauerkraut and swiss cheese.  My soup was a new try – something called Kreplach.  I am going to try to recreate this at home – it basically was a pastry filled dumpling with seasoned ground beef in chicken broth – very good!

Sorry the lighting isn’t very good in this place!  I ate 1/2 of my sandwich and about 10 french fries.

Then it was onto the Japanese grocery store, where I finally found this!

Can’t wait to finally try this – I’ve seen it everywhere in food blogville!  I just had to go over to the bakery section too:

But I did not buy anything there!  At the second grocery store, while Tony waited in line at the deli, I had to scan out their $1 racks.  If I have any regular readers, you know I find tons of deals on the dollar rack – just look at this loot!  Every package on this rack sells for $1!  Sorry random grocery store person for getting in my photo!

So when we got home, I stared on my Italian Sunday Gravy.  That is tomorrow nights dinner.  Another name for it is $20 meat gravy, because there is a lot of meat!  You’ll just have to come over tomorrow night for the rest of the details!  I am using my friend Christina’s Dad’s hot sausage in this recipe – it looks so fricken good!

Then I decided I had to do something with this weeks BSI ingredient – Pancake Mix!  Caitlin of Healthy Tipping Point is this weeks hostess.  The only catch is that you can’t make pancakes or waffles!

I got the idea of making a cheddar beer bread, only using bisquick, a beer and a cup of cheese.  At the last second I thought I might add an additional teaspoon of baking powder – but that ruined it!  It had an aftertaste that was not pleasant at all!  But I am not giving up!  I am going to try again tomorrow, reducing the beer and adding bacon! 😀  It looked pretty coming out of the oven though!

So while I went next door to our neighbors house to watch their youngest kids for an hour or so, Tony made dinner!  He was watching American Test Kitchens on our local PBS station and while they were making shrimp salad, he thought the process of cooking the chicken would make the best shrimp cocktail.  HOLY YUM this was incredible!  I wish my pictures showed this shrimp justice – but it was amazing!  So flavorful and meaty! 😀

Best Shrimp Cocktail Ever! (process courtesy of America’s Test Kitchen)

• 1 pound extra large shrimp
• 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (one lemon), + one additional tablespoon from a bottle, saving the shell of the lemon
• 5 sprigs of parsley, plus 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley leaves
• 3 sprigs of fresh tarragon, plus 1 tablespoon chopped tarragon laves
• cracked ground pepper
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt

Combine shrimp, lemon juice, reserved lemon halves, parsley sprigs, tarragon sprigs, pepper and sugar and salt in a medium sauce pan.  Add 2 cups cold water and over medium heat, cook shrimp stirring several times until pink and the water reaches 165 degrees.  Tony actually put our remote meat thermometer in the pan and once it reached 165 degrees, removed from heat, covered and let the shrimp sit in the broth for 2 minutes.

Then he strained the pot and put the shrimp directly in an ice bath to stop the cooking process for 3 minutes.  Their recipe went on to make shrimp salad.  Tony however just patted the shrimp dry from the ice bath and kept them chilled in the refrigerator.  Seriously, I am pretty sure this is going to be a staple in our menu – and also great for company because you can make it ahead of time.

The second part of the dinner was Garlicky Shrimp with Bread Crumbs.  The sauce was actually butter, garlic, red pepper flakes and clam juice!  Then you add 2 teaspoons of flour until the sauce reduces.  He toasted up some breadcrumbs earlier.

THANKS FOR THE DELICIOUS DINNER AND MY “BIZ” DAY!  I love you more every day I know you! 😀

Alright, this is already a monster post, so off I go to snuggle with Tony!  See you tomorrow for more bread making and classic Italian Sunday Dinner! 😀

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