Whisk Wednesdays—Beignets de Langoustines or Crevettes (Langoustine or Shrimp Fritters)

More deep-frying this week. I swear, my doctor isn't going to be pleased with this curriculum I'm working through. Butter, deep frying, plus all the treats I'm making for Tuesdays with Dorie and Daring Bakers. I usually like to "hibernate" in winter and worry about beaches and bathing suits in Spring, but I really should start my workout regimen now given how much damage I've been doing lately.

How To
This week it's deep-fried shrimp that's been marinated, battered, and fried. Although the recipe called for langoustines, I found shrimp easily at the big box grocery store and stuck with that. First, I marinated the shrimp in lemon, parsley, and olive oil for about an hour. While it was marinating, I prepared the batter.

The batter called for both flour and potato flour. I had some potato flour, but not enough so I used regular flour as a substitute. To the flours, I added baking powder for leavening, salt for flavor, water to lighten the batter, and olive oil to keep it from forming a crust. I actually added an extra cup of water since it seemed more like dough than batter before that. After resting this mixture for 1 hour, I added whipped egg whites for more leavening and lightness.

Then, I dipped the shrimp in the batter and lowered them into the hot 350˚F oil to cook until golden brown, which didn't take very long.

Although I was supposed to make a fancy tartar sauce to go with this, I made one a couple weeks ago and didn't want to make another version. Instead of adding even more fat to my diet, I blended some Hellman's Mayonnaise and Kraft Thousand Island dressing and made a just-as-good dipping sauce for my shrimp, and probably just as fatty!

Recipe

You can find the recipe for Beignets de Langoustines or Crevettes (Langoustine or Shrimp Fritters) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home. To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with their recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Tasting Notes
These were crispy and delicious dipped into my easy "tartar" sauce. I have about 2 cups left of batter. Should I deep fry some more food? I don't know. It's wintry and blustery and cold to open all the windows in the house now!

Today was the first (and a very early) snow day in Ottawa. Although the kids hoped for an official snow day where they could stay home from school, it was not as bad as predicted by the weather officials who thought it would be a "Humdinger" of a snow storm so they had to go to school after all. I got to use this snowflake plate (thanks, Mom!), however, to represent this auspicious but depressing day and photograph my shrimp in the snow.

Next Week (November 5)
• Pavés de Rumsteak au Poivre Vert (Sirloin Steaks with Green Peppercorns) pages 127-128

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Running total: $811.80 + $12.00 (shrimp) + $5.45 (marinade and batter) = $829.25

Butter used so far: 8 pounds, 3 tablespoons

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::Whisk Wednesdays::
We're cooking our way through a cooking school curriculum using the Le Cordon Bleu at Home cookbook. The "classes" are based on the Le Cordon Bleu curriculum found online and used as a guideline. Not all the items in the curriculum are in the cookbook, but most are. Where the items are not in the book, we try to find a suitable substitution. Find out more here.