Keepin' It Creole Cedar Wrapped Gumbo!

I wasn't Born on the Bayou, but I have a friend who was... Barry Lofton, team member of the award-winning Gumbo Cook-off team "O-kra-p Dat's Good Gumbeaux," shared some authentic Louisianian wisdom on the subject of Cajun cookin'...

Well, if it ain't broke... This guy knows what he's doing, so I'm just going to rip off his method lock, stock, and barrel. Then throw a little Northwest flare there on the end.

Chocolate Brown Roux

Now just follow the pro's instructions on the slicing, stiring, and sauteing...

Okra about to be blanched with 2 caps of white vinegar

Spicy

Prawns

Wrappin'

Preheat grill (the oven will work too!) to 400 degrees. Then arrange prawns and langostinos in center of wrap, parallel to the grain of the wood. Fold edges toward each other and overlap slightly. Tie with a piece of the enclosed natural fiber twine.

On the grill...

Cedar Wrapped Langostinos and Prawns

Daaang! Dat's some good gumbo. Happy Fat Tuesday! -KB

This is one of those things where it felt like my sock drawer had a collision with the ocean and my kitchen. Shrimp and cedar grilling wraps? Weird right?

I've heard of grilling salmon on cedar grilling planks, and even found a really sweet recipe last Christmas for plank grilled figs and pancetta. I didn't know however, you could buy sheets of wood so thin it's almost like paper. But I'm always up for new things, even though cooking meat successfully is difficult for me (I almost always ruin it or overcook it), and I definitely can't grill. What could be difficult about wrapping up some fresh seafood in paper and grilling it?

Nothing actually. It was as easy as it sounded.

The idea with cedar grilling wraps (or any plank grilling) is to soak the wood in water/juice/wine/whatever. Then when you grill your food on the soaked wood, you infuse your food with all the smokey goodness and flavor of the wood. I'm a newbie at this, so I soaked the cedar wraps in water for 20 min.

Probably one of the reasons I'm so bad with grilling, is I tend to forgo the recipe. In this case however, my lackadaisical cooking paid off, because this shrimp could not have tasted better.

I tossed together some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, with shrimp, cilantro, red bell pepper, red pepper flakes and garlic. And that was that. I really wish I could say it was harder- that I slaved away, or that it took an incredible amount of skill, but honestly it took about 10 min. The filling was ready to go by the time the grilling wrappers were done soaking.

Ingredients

1/2 lb Shrimp

3 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar

2 Tablespoons olive oil

2 cloves of garlic minced

half bunch of cilantro, chopped (if you don't like cilantro, you could use parsley)

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes (omit these entirely if you don't like spicy food)

half bell pepper, diced

Salt to taste

Directions

First: Combine ingredients in a bowl, put half of mixture on each cedar wrap. Roll with the grain, tie with twine. Grill on med high for 3 min/side. I arranged the shrimp mixture on the soaked Outdoor Gourmet Cedar Grilling Wraps like I was making a burrito.

Then: wrapped it up and tied it with twine. The hardest part was finding the end to the twine. (don't judge me...ahem)

Next: Grilled it on Medium-High...three min on each side and it was done!

Finally: I served it with wild rice pilaf and salad with a cucumber dill dressing (the coolness of cucumber dill dressing helped tone down the spiciness of the shrimp).

Jim gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up...the kids liked it ok, but weren't a fan of the spiciness. I can't wait to try planked chicken next.