Menu D'Jour - And you thought slaw was boring...

Another week. Another delightful meal. This time we took advantage of some lingering carrots and cabbage tucked into our CSA share from Snow's Bend, fresh green tomatoes from Burnette Farms, and Alabama farm-raised shrimp that was purchased at Birmingham's Tria Market. I have to admit the concoction was accidental. We originally planned to eat all the items separately, arranged in nice and neat little piles on our plate. But voila, our creativity and sheer food madness took a hold of us once again, inspiring this southern-style fusion dish. Eat well, and don't forget the Abita!

Garlic-Basil Shrimp with Goat Cheese, Fried Green Tomatoes, and Coleslaw

Garlic-Basil Shrimp
(modified from Martha Stewart Living):
1 lb shrimp, peeled
1 giant clove of elephant garlic (or 3-5 regular garlic cloves), chopped
2 T olive oil
1/3 cup freshly torn basil
1/2 tsp coarse salt
1 tsp freshly ground pepper
1 tsp honey

Heat oil over medium hi heat. Add garlic and cook until just begins to brown (less than 5 min). Add shrimp and cook until turn opaque, stirring frequently. Stir in salt, pepper, honey, and basil.

Fried Green Tomatoes
3-4 green tomatoes (depends on hungry you are!)
buttermilk
cornmeal
vegetable oil for frying

Cut tomatoes in slices, about 1/2 inch thick. Place buttermilk and cornmeal in two separate shallow dishes. Dip each tomato slice in the buttermilk, then dredge with cornmeal. Fill an iron skillet about 1/4 inch with vegetable oil. Fry tomatoes until golden brown, about 2 minutes on each side.

Quick Summer Slaw
This is a repeat performer! See the June 11 post.

Once it's all prepared, layer fried green tomatoes on a bed of coleslaw. Top with garlic-basil shrimp and sprinkle with goat cheese (Try Belle Chevre, it's delicious!). Bon Appetit!

Comments

[Lil Bill]

I have a general food question. Why is it okay to eat eggs raw sometimes like in fresh Mayonnaise, but if you fail to clean a cutting board that may or may not have been in the room with a raw egg some people(lets call him “Health Inspector Johnson” of Scottsboro AL) will absolutely flip their gourd over it. And so as to make the question more relevant to the particulars of this Bolg, are locally produced and less processed foods any less likely to be contaminated for any other reasons than the earlier mentioned tainted chicken leavings problem. And now that I’m on this topic, is chicken manure an acceptable organic fertilizer? Is chicken manure from a small laying cage better than a large chicken farm.

[Joe Brown]

You should never eat uncooked eggs if you are uncomfortable with the risk of food poisoning a la Salmonella, which normally inhabits the gut of fowl, and so may besmirch the occasional feces-tainted egg. The risk is always there, although the insides of eggs should be sterile, and one should thoroughly clean the outside with hot soapy water to further reduce the risk. It's difficult and probably not useful to make generalizations about whether local/sustainable eggs are any safer in this regard. Maybe, maybe not, depending on the farm and how you handle it.

Chicken manure should absolutely and always be composted before use to kill any microbes that may be present, regardless of the conditions under which the animal was raised. Chickens who are fed hormones or antibiotics will have these things in their feces, but these also tend to break down during composting and there is no evidence to suggest that antibiotics or hormones present in fertilizer can end up in produce. But just in case, I would feel better about using manure from animals raised sans chemicals, of course.