This weeks Ellie Krieger recipe was chosen by Anonymous in New York, and can be found on page 236 of Ellie’s book “The Food You Crave“.
The recipe allowed me to easily hide the vegetarian protein that I substituted for the ham. It was only revealed to Ted after he first, confirmed that he liked it and second, had consumed half his meal. The disclosure of the meatless pepperoni addition was followed by the comments… “I thought I saw something “funny” in there”. The only ingredient, other than the ham, I was tempted to leave out was the rice, but for Ted’s sake, it was included. That rice ended up giving me a little grief.
Ted was needed in order to devein the shrimp. This procedure is really disgusting to me. It’s worse than beating chicken. At least you have the wax paper separating you and the chicken. After that little chore was done, we were off and cooking.
I chose the vegetarian “pepperoni” (about 4.2 oz) over ham (6 oz) to give it more flavor…hence the “something funny in there“. I also used Cajun seasoning (1/2 tsp) instead of cayenne pepper (1/4 tsp). Vegetable broth was used instead of chicken broth (2 1/2 cups). As for the recipe instructions, the timing for the rice was off by about 10 minutes and almost caused chaos when it came to this dish. After the said 20 minutes, as written in the book, I lifted off the hot cover and dumped in my shrimp that had been sitting in lemon juice for 20 minutes. As I stirred in the shrimp, the rice looked a little “thin” to me. It was no where near cooked. Ahh! I had to meticulously scoop those shrimp out in order to let the rice cook for at least (I estimated) another 10 minutes.
It was smooth sailing after the rice mishap. The dish was really good. Ted didn’t use the hot sauce, I did but it really didn’t need it. It had the right amount of heat and it was full of flavor. We really enjoyed this recipe.
Good choice Anon. in New York. Spicy deveined shrimp works for me every time.
Apple C 
Deveining shrimp is icky. I will never forgive Alton Brown for explaining that it’s not actually a “vein” but is the digestive tract. He then took it even further and alluded to what the brownstuff inside it is. And I’m pretty sure I have heard the vein referred to as “the poop shoot” more than once. Blech. I almost always buy cleaned and deveined shrimp, but my mom gave me a pound of shrimp a while back that needed cleaned. I’m not going to lie: a pair of latex gloves makes everything more tolerable. I was pretty disgusted at first, but once the gloves went on, it was fine. Something to keep in mind for those nasty moments of handling chicken or cleaning out the poop shoots 🙂
Eeewww! Thanks for all that info. I knew it was the digestive tract but preferred to remain in denial. I was watching “Chopped” last night and two of the contestants didn’t clean their shrimp very well. The judges were not pleased.
I have never tried meatless pepperoni, but it sounds like Ted couldn’t really tell the difference until you pointed it out! Your dish looks fantastic!!!
Of course yours looks so delicious, as always!! I’m sure it was better with shrimp, but I’ll have to stick to a shrimpless version. 🙂
Oh my gosh that looks so good! I love the changes you made, I definitely want to try to make something like that!
Ted must be quite trusting of you. I would ALWAYS suspect you were sneaking vegetarian protein into my meal and the confirmation it was good, was a trap. Here is how I would have played this instead:
“So honey, do you like your meal, I see you’ve eaten half of it already?”
This sounds suspicious. Akin to the cliche “Does this make my ass look fat” question.
10 second pause to consider answer
“Why are you asking me if I like it AND pointing out that I have already eaten half of it? Is one not indicative enough of the other already to render it completely unnecessary to ask? What KIND OF TRAP ARE YOU LAYING HERE WOMAN!”
“You know something, you’re crazy”
At least that’s how it goes in my house…
Deveining shrimp is NASTY. I agree.
Beautiful photos.
This was such a great dish!
Looks great!!
It looks really good!
I would devein shrimp any day over handling raw chicken.
LL
I always try to pawn off the shrimp deveining job to Nick. It’s gross and annoying.
I am intrigued by your vegetarian pepperoni, what is it made of?
It looks delicious, and I love all those macro shots! I’m in the same camp as Lori Lynn. Give me shrimp deveining over touching raw chicken any day.
And like Sara, I’m curious about your veggie pepperoni since my Soyrizo wouldn’t fool anyone who hadn’t lived under a rock all their life.
It looks wonderful! I loathe deveining shrimp — it has to be one of the worst kitchen jobs (yes, even though I hate shrimp, I’ve made it a couple of times). I think that the vegetarian protein would be very easy to hide in this!
This sounds like the perfect meal..Thanks for sharing. Figtreeapps
Looks great! I used ground turkey, sneakily avoiding any shrimp handling. When I do cook with shrimp (although rarely), I splurge on the precooked, already deveined kind at Trader Joe’s. So worth it!
Regarding the vegetarian pepperoni: It is made from wheat gluten and soy protein isolate (like a soy protein shake instead of whey protein). I chopped it really small so it was hardly noticable. If there had been large chunks in the dish, Ted would have picked them out.
I’m glad you liked the recipe! Sorry the rice gave you problems. Great blog you have here! 🙂