The New Chef's Journal

Brazilian shrimp soup is something I've never made before or even tried in a restaurant. This recipe is something that I stumbled across by accident while searching for something new to make and thought it sounded delicious. This is the description included when the recipe was originally published in Food & Wine magazine:            " Coconut milk's rich flavor will keep you coming back for more of this  substantial soup. A true Brazilian version would include slices of okra,  but ours is already so satisfyingly thick that we left it out." For those interested, this is the wine recommendation: "The sweet elements here call for a somewhat assertive sweetness in the wine as well. A Vouvray demi-sec, from France's Loire Valley, ought to strike just the right balance." The recipe I'm using is a combination of the original Food & Wine version and versions from the Annie's Eats food blog and Group Recipes . My version includes a bit m...

For Valentine's Day I decided to make one of my girlfriend's favorite dishes - shrimp fra diavolo. This shrimp dish has a little bit of a kick thanks to the crushed red pepper. I've done this dish over both pasta and creamy polenta. My preference is to mix it with thin spaghetti, which is what I did this time. The recipe I'm using for this comes from the Food Network's Giada DiLaurentiis. Of all the chef's on the food network I've had the most success using Giada's recipes, though Tyler Florence, Rachel Ray, Ina Garten, Emeril and the Neeley's have some great stuff too. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/shrimp-fra-diavolo-recipe/index.html The original recipe calls for fresh herbs, which because of time constraints I didn't have available. This recipe still works well with dried herbs. The rule for converting from fresh to dried is that 1 tablespoon fresh herbs = 1 teaspoon dried herbs. Or in this case 3 tablespoons fres...