Notes from Stella's Kitchen
(Originally published in June 2004)
It’s now late spring, the weather is getting warmer each day and the Mississippi shrimping season is about to start. Louisiana has already opened their season, but Mississippi will wait until mid-June to do so, but for now we are fortunate to have access to the Louisiana crop. Thank goodness this is so, frozen shrimp will do in a pinch, but nothing beats eating shrimp caught the same day you purchased them.
Keep that thought on shrimps in mind and I’ll go back to it in a moment.
Fashions and fads come and go and then come back again and this is true of some good, old reliable recipes. This thought brought to mind a recipe that I haven’t made in many years, but have always enjoyed. The recipe is one you may remember, Green Goddess Salad Dressing! But have you tried it lately?
It’s a good simple recipe, made of fresh and readily available ingredients (particularly if you keep a herb garden) and brings with it a versatility that seems to have no end, especially as we shall see with seafood. My use up to now has been to usually use it on a nice, fresh garden salad or as an accompaniment to chicken or as a dipping sauce for fresh vegetables in a veggie platter.
But, (and here we are back to discussing fresh shrimp) I have found a new and wonderful use. It is absolutely great combined with or used as a sauce with seafood such as fried fish, oysters or shrimp.
I made a trial batch of Green Goddess this past week and asked Paul to try it to see what he thought it needed as to seasoning. Well, he got a spoon from the drawer and tried a spoonful. And then there was another spoonful and then another and then another. It seemed the way he was wearing down my spoon that it didn’t need any more seasonings, there wouldn’t be any left.
I made some more and decided to explore and try something new with her green majesty. This centered on mixing it into a salad using as a chief ingredient some fresh shrimp I had just boiled. Well, the resulting shrimp salad was delicious, and I’ve included it below as a recipe for you to enjoy.
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P. S. I should add that Paul and I couldn’t get enough of the Green Goddess as a stand-alone dressing. So, I made another fresh batch for random dipping. Some friends stopped by later and I asked them to try the dressing to get an unbiased opinion. They had a little and then a little more and than some more. They had it on just about everything I had in the kitchen, fresh veggies, boiled shrimp and bread cubes.
Some deliverymen came by while our friends were here and they tried the dressing as well. They loved it and, mind you, they were from Louisiana!
And so it goes that you can’t have just one bite of this dressing and there are so many things to try it on! Fried oysters, fresh grilled fish on and on …
Bon Appetit!
