Good Food
I absolutely love grits. I can eat them with just about anything. Below is a fabulous recipe I received from a friend and co-worker. If you love to cook and enjoy grits and seafood, be sure to give this recipe a try.
SHRIMP and GRITS 
Ingredients:
2-3 pieces of thick bacon per serving: Thick bacon is recommended because thin, flimsy bacon is NOT worth greasing up your stove. You can bake the bacon in the oven at 400º F in a sheet pan or cookie sheet or just about any dish that will collect the bacon drippings. Thick cut bacon also gives the dish a less salty flavor and better texture.
2 green onions or leeks—white parts and a little bit of the green: When you get to the part of the onion where it’s completely green, stop chopping. Save the green part for garnish if you don’t want to throw it out. You can also use white onion, but slice it into thin, half-rings and don’t use more than 1/4 of the onion.
Button mushrooms (fresh or canned): No real quantity here. Use as many as you like.
1-2 cloves of garlic, chopped or minced
1 carton of heavy cream
1 stick of butter
1/2 lemon
1-3 tablespoons white wine
black, white, and cayenne pepper
Salt: Either Kosher or Sea Salt, not iodized. Your food will be way too salty
Shrimp: About 6-7 large shrimp per serving
Cheese: White cheddar, yellow cheddar, fresh grated parmesan or 3 cheese Italian blend, or any combination of those)
Grits: Prepare grits according to package directions. Salt the water BEFORE. If you salt grits after they’re cooked they will not be salty enough.
1. Set burner to med to med high heat.
2. Fry the bacon. You can cut it into pieces before or after frying. Your choice.
3. While bacon is frying, slice the mushrooms and onions, chop the garlic.
4. Remove bacon and all BUT 2 tablespoons of bacon drippings from the pan. Set bacon aside.
5. Turn the burner down to a medium heat setting. Gauge throughout next steps to decide if more heat is needed.
6. Add about 2-3 tablespoons butter or slightly less depending on how much bacon drippings you left in the pan. Let butter melt.
7. Add sliced mushrooms, then green onions and sauté about 2 minutes. Add garlic and sauté about 1 more minute. Be careful not to burn the garlic.
8. Add shrimp. Sauté about 3 minutes. Do not cook shrimp too long as they will become tough.
9. Squeeze a bit of lemon juice around the pan.
10. Add the white wine. The pan will sizzle. Take a spatula and scrape up the bits from the pan (the bits should not be burnt … hopefully)
11. Add heavy cream. You want a nice, thick “broth”, but you don’t want it to be soupy, so use about 1 cup. If that doesn’t look like enough, add more.
12. Add black, white, and cayenne pepper. If you like it spicy, use more.
13. Add cheese and bacon.
14. Let simmer until sauce thickens. You may need to turn up the heat at this point to about med-high to high. You need a slight boil to thicken. Do not use a lid.
15. Set the shrimp and bacon sauce aside.
16. Follow the directions for grits on the box.
17. If grits seem too thick, add a bit of cream or milk to thin them out. The consistency should be somewhere b/w oatmeal and cream of wheat. They need to be able to stand up to the shrimp sauce.
18. After the grits are done, add 2 tablespoons of butter and cheese.
To serve, place grits in bowl. Top the grits with the shrimp sauce and sprinkle of green onions. Enjoy!
If you live in or plan a visit to the Washington, D.C area, you can find shrimp and grits on the menu at DC Coast, a restaurant that serves modern American cuisine with flavors of the tri-coastal areas — Mid-Atlantic, Gulf Coast and West Coast. The influence from these areas provides each dish with distinctive tastes of Southern, Southwestern, Mid-Atlantic and Pacific Rim-style cooking.
For more information about DC Coast, visit http://www.dccoast.com.
DC Coast is located in the Tower Building.
1401 K Street, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 216.5988
(202) 371.2221 (Fax)
info@dccoast.com