Southwest Style Shrimp Fiesta

After a long work week I enjoyed a day off today and the opportunity to cook something special for the family. I posted on facebook that I was cooking and even the girls, who no longer live at home, showed up for dinner tonight. It was great having all the kids home and the family eating together. A fun menu like the one I had planned sort of lures them in. For some reason when I decide to have a mexican dinner I go absolutely LOCO in the kitchen and we have a lot to eat. Maybe it goes back to my first memories of eating Mexican at Pancho's buffet in New Orleans. Eat, raise the flag, eat some more,. raise the flag,  haha! 

We started off with some homemade guacamole that I made with fresh ripe avocados, fresh squeezed organic lime juice, sea salt and one tomato, a serrano pepper and some cloves of garlic minced in my Ninja. I mashed it all with a potato masher and it was the best guacamole I have ever had. I am known for making good guacamole but I added a little extra love to this batch. Never had it this good in a restaurant, and definitely not any store bought variety either. It's easy. If you have never tried before I highly recommend it.( Avocados should definitely be on your delicious and healthy foods list since they contain high levels of monounsaturated fats, phytosterols and antioxidants like vitamin E, and vitamin C.)  Of course we had some chips with the guacamole. They were also homemade from non-gmo corn tortillas. If you can't find these where you shop you can order them online. I cut the tortillas into quarters and then deep fried them in grass-fed beef tallow. Grass fed beef tallow is one of the best sources of CLA, conjugated linoleic acid, known to help fight cancer. I use the tallow for the occasional frying I do, as well as for roux, sauces and gravies. Good stuff.

 For our side dish I could not resist making this dish that I had thrown together once before. I am calling it a Chile Rellenos Frittata. I am pretty sure it is my version of the classic chiles rellenos. It consists of oven roasted, peeled and seeded poblano peppers that I stuffed with a mixture of carmelized onion and garlic with a fresh all-natural  chihuahua cheese. Then I beat some eggs and cream together, pour it over the top, season, sprinkle with a little cheese and bake in the oven until it looks like the above photo.  I will be posting a step- by -step recipe for this soon because it is so, so good. Twice now it got totally wiped out.

Next I literally threw together this little southwest slaw. It is a bagged southwest slaw mix that I combined with a pepper jelly dressing I whipped up in my Ninja. I can't believe I thought of this. My homemade green pepper jelly, a little olive oil and a little organic sour cream. It was very similar to a regular slaw dressing, but with that pepper jelly kick, and of course no mayonnaise was involved. You can eat this all by itself but I made it to put on top of my entree. For the entree I had something very, very yummy planned.

David picked up these fresh caught Louisiana shrimp for me this afternoon. We sat at the kitchen table and peeled them together. For my southwest style shrimp I lined a large pan, coated it with olive oil, spread out the clean and peeled shrimp and then seasoned them with fresh minced garlic and serrano peppers, salt free fiesta lime seasoning, and a lot of fresh squeezed lime juice. I baked them at 400 degrees for a few minutes until they became the lovely pink shade you see in the photo. It was extremely difficult not to just eat these shrimp like popcorn. Somehow I managed to resist. It may have been the voices calling to me from the other room "Is it ready yet? When are we eating? I'm starving!" --Sound familiar? It doesn't even matter what time we eat. I guess just smelling the food makes them become impatient hungry people. As soon as the shrimp were ready I wrapped the foil around them to keep them warm and proceeded to start frying the corn tortillas in the already hot and waiting pot of beef tallow. I kept some flat for tostadas and I used tongs to bend others into taco shells. Then I combined guacamole, shrimp, the pepper jelly southwest slaw and cheese to make these absolutely delicious shrimp tacos and tostadas. Seriously one of the best southwest style meals I have ever had. The best part is that I have plenty of the components leftover and I am planning something delicious, quick and easy, yet slightly different for dinner after work tomorrow.