Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Easter At Almost Heaven South

Deviating from our normal “any excuse for a party” mode, we decided on just a family meal for the three of us, Pat, and Wende (daughter).  We discussed several traditional meal options and, at Pat’s suggestion, opted to go with the very traditional coconut shrimp J, sided with roasted potatoes and a pickled beet salad.

After cleaning, I butterflied the shrimp then laid them cut side down on a plate in the fridge to help them hold that shape.  I used the same breading and sauce recipes as last time (wow – nearly three years ago – what have we been thinking). 

The potatoes were inspired by Ina’s Rosemary Baked Potato Wedges, except I used Potlatch (seafood) Seasoning and the grill as an oven.  After preheating the grill, I cooked them over direct medium heat until a crust developed on the first cut side, then flipped to the other cut side and repeated.  When the crust was almost formed on side two, I moved them to indirect heat to finish cooking.

Madison wanted to color Easter eggs and per her request, Bev boiled 30, but as is too often the case, Madison was ready to quit after about a dozen – some pretty nice hand painted ones though.

So Bev has been working hard on egg salad recipes and dropped some of the hard boiled ones into a jar of pickled beet juice to use on her Easter salad creation of romaine lettuce, pickled beets, pickled eggs, crumbled Feta cheese, and Caesar Dressing (sweet onion optional).


And what could be better for a southern dessert than bananas foster using the original recipe from Brennan's in NOLA.

The coconut shrimp and sauce were a big hit and, while the potatoes were good, everyone thought they needed a little more oomph.  Bev’s salad invention was very good as was the dessert.  I think we all agreed that we preferred this to any of the more traditional Easter meals – ever wonder who has decided what we should eat for the holiday meals?  I’m not playing by their rules anymore :-).

Photos best if enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

3/31/13 meal date

17 comments:

  1. I think it's fun to deviate from tradition sometimes. Love those shrimp!
    Sam

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  2. This looks like a delicious Easter meal. With food that good, who cares about tradition?

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  3. All your seafood dishes look fantastic. I know a lot of people that would love this coconut shrimp. The eggs are really beautiful too. How did they color them? Pickled egg salad is also very smart - I like your idea of a traditional Easter dinner :)

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  4. Coconut shrimp . . . My favorite! I would do this for Easter too. Hope you had a good one.

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  5. Wow this is a great party menu!! Love the pretty eggs and that yummy bananas foster!!

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  6. Coconut shrimp is one of my favorite things. I would pick this meal any day of the week over baked ham.
    traditional holiday meals are sacred at my house...maybe some day I'll be brave and change it up.

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  7. What a fantastic meal!! Everything looks delicious, especially the bananas foster. YUM.

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  8. Madison hand painted the eggs using Candy Apple Easter Egg Dye from Walmart - http://www.wackyplanet.com/candyappleeggs.html

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  9. It all sounds good, but I do adore Bananas Foster!

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  10. Larry, Madison did a great job with those eggs! When we saw them we thought that they were decorative stones or glass... As for the dinner, it looked really fine! The dessert was killer...or as they say, it was the 'bomb' or it was 'sick'...all meaning good things. Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

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  11. Hi Larry, Looks like a great Easter meal... I'd love that coconut shrimp and roasted potatoes.... YUM...

    Hugs,
    Betsy
    P.S. Madison did a good job with her eggs...

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  12. I love coconut shrimp and would definitely take it over baked ham any day.

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  13. I love to see that you went against tradition.. this sounds and looks like the perfect Easter dinner to me! Actually.. the perfect dinner any time of the year.

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  14. What a perfect meal. Those eggs make for such a pretty salad, the potatoes look scrumptious, even though I've never made it, coconut shrimp sounds wonderful, and Brennans Bananas Foster?????? OMG!!!! Did you flambe? I have a Brennans cookbook, wonder if the recipe is in it? I have found myself looking at recipes and am amazed sometimes by the time lapse of when I last made something that we found delicious.

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  15. What a wonderful Easter meal, Larry! I haven't had coconut shrimp since the restaurant I loved closed. I'll be checking out that breading and sauce recipe :)

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  16. Oh, Big!! That looks so good!! Love the shrimp and the spuds look good to me, but I'm Irish.

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  17. That is one fantastic Easter dinner spread Larry! We were in Knoxville and I thought of you guys! Outside of going to church and eating, we were in our daughter's kitchen putting up tile in her kitchen. We didn't get the whole job done so we are thinking about coming back up to K-town in a few weeks for the dogwood trail days. Lauren's house is on one of the dogwood trails and we've never done that, even when I lived in Knoxville, I was always too busy.

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