Another US food export? You betcha.

November 23, 2023 8:43 AM

Help me prepare the yummiest possible shrimp, cheese, and rice dish for my friends here in Spain!

Help me serve my multinational friends the yummiest shrimp, cheese, and rice concoction they're likely to sample this side of NOLA (or Minneapolis!).

A couple of ground rules:

1) No canned soups
2) No pork products or alcohol (not that those loom large in this kind of dish anyway)
3) Low-processed or unprocessed ingredients preferred. I don't mind using supermarket cheese, but would really rather use something closer to the cow, goat, or sheep.
4) Don't worry about oven temp or convection conversions. I'll do that myself Insha Allah.

posted by rabia.elizabeth to Food & Drink (9 answers total)

Does it need to be all one dish? I don't usually think of shrimp and cheese as an ideal combination. If not, I would do shrimp creole or jambalaya with shrimp and some other compatible star ingredient of your choice, a merguez sausage would work great. Then do goat cheese on the side with crusty bread and green salad, or put the goat cheese in the salad.
posted by Rhedyn at 9:44 AM on November 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Please stick to the parameters as given especially the no-pork part. Thanks!
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 10:15 AM on November 23, 2023

Merguez is usually lamb or beef!
posted by staggernation at 10:20 AM on November 23, 2023 [8 favorites]

As staggernation says, merguez is a lamb/beef sausage from Maghrebi cuisine, which I suggested precisely because you specified no pork.
posted by Rhedyn at 10:23 AM on November 23, 2023 [9 favorites]

What about prawn arancini? I believe you can substitute a little extra stock and some lemon juice for the wine.
posted by fight or flight at 10:49 AM on November 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

Best answer: If I were attempting this, I would use Paula Deen’s recipe, but add more spices and more veggies, and make the mushroom gloop.

One thing to watch for is the dairy in the mushroom concoction: dairy in Europe is pretty different from the US, usually richer (and has less lactose?) so you may need to get creative on your proportions and flavors. Also, the rice will be different! Buena suerte!
posted by vunder at 11:09 AM on November 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks to all who responded!

I'm probably going to try the Paula Deen + homemade mushgloop combo, Insha Allah, but with bomba (short-grain) rice instead of the wild variety, since bomba cooks up very nicely in my little rice cooker.
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 12:57 PM on November 23, 2023

In my opinion shrimp and grits with a side of dirty rice (sans sausage) is the first and only answer to this
posted by cocoagirl at 5:31 PM on November 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Shrimp and cheese screams grits to me! Maybe with shrimp Creole to get some rice in there?

Or the Paula Deen thing looks delicious. I love shrimp n grits, and I love shrimp Creole, but they're each only 2/3 of your requested ingredients and they're a bit off an odd pairing.
posted by cnidaria at 8:35 PM on November 23, 2023 [1 favorite]