Congratulations to Jess at Hungry For Seconds for winning our last giveaway! Your San Francisco goodie package will be on its way as soon as I hit the post office! Also, read to the end for another giveaway and a sponsor announcement!

Last week, Central Florida had four hard freezes in six days. Normally, the rest of the county will have a frost and we stay slightly above since we’re close to the water. Not last week — mid-20s even where we were, and there was a skim of slushy ice on our canal.

We’re not used to weather like that, but more than our comfort, I was actually worried about my coconut trees. They usually can’t take a hard freeze, and even though it warmed above freezing in the middle of the day, four freezes a week made it a pretty tough week for them.

We’ve been getting a good harvest of coconuts this last month, even before the freeze. I thought I’d take advantage of them to make a red curry sauce. Christey wanted some skewered shrimp cooked on the grill, and they paired up nicely.

No lime in this coconut…(read more)

For November’s POM Wonderful Blog Post, I made shrimp tempura with a POM pomegranate juice wasabi sauce. I wanted to fuse a little Japanese techniques with Floridian and even a little French and see how everything turned out. I knew the pomegrante base for the sauce would work well with ginger and garlic and lemon zest; pomegranate juice is bold enough to take on the flavors without overwhelming or being overwhelmed. Wasabi also goes well in sauces with sweet notes, especially Japanese plum and citrus sauces.

Even though it’s almost winter, and heavy meat braises with roots are coming into their time, it’s still warm here in Florida, so I wanted something a little lighter. I shelled some local Florida shrimp and made a tempura batter, lightly frying them in vegetable oil.

This could either be an appetizer or a main course, depending on how many shrimp are made. Christey and I couldn’t imagine moving on to anything else after this, so between us we devoured over a pound of shrimp.
Recipe and technique inside…

Christey and I started blogging about food on LiveJournal, just as a fun way to shoot what we would occassionally have for dinner. When I decided to step up my cooking, and Christey decided to step up her food photography, we realized we needed something a little more robust than LJ. We moved to WordPress’s site, then eventually to our own server using WordPress software. One year ago on April 1st, we bought the domain FotoCuisine.com (PhotoCuisine.com was taken, ironically on several levels, by a French company) and linked it to our WordPress site. The lines of where our food blogging started are a little blurry, but buying the domain is a pretty good line in the sand, so welcome to the second year of FotoCuisine!

Christey and I thank you very much for your support, comments, links, suggestions, and all-around fellow-foodieness!

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When I lived in Atlanta, I made a lot of gumbo. I haven’t made it in a while, though, and when I saw Top Chef’s New Orleans episode a few weeks back, I told myself I had to make it again soon.

There are factions within the gumbo world that I don’t pretend to fully comprehend. Just like wet vs. dry barbecue, if your family hasn’t made their particular version for a century or so, you’re pretty much dismissed to the sidelines of the argument. One of the biggest gumbo controversies is okra vs. file as a thickener. Personally, I annoy both sides, because I like both about equally. But, when I make it myself, I almost always use file. And, when you get right down to it, the thickener isn’t really what makes gumbo a good gumbo. If there’s any agreement at all about gumbo it’s this one fact: it’s all about the roux.

gumbo gumbo

This just happens to be the 100th post on FotoCuisine.com. It also happens to use some ingredients given to us by our favorite foodie friends, Jenn and Roberto, from The Leftover Queen during their visit with us recently.

Jenn has some friends who send her spices from all over the world, and when Jenn and Roberto visited us, she gave me a sample stash from her larger stash. Most of the spices seemed to originate from the Indonesian area of the world, and even in storage, their fragrance is still amazing every time I open the cabinet door!

I wanted to make a red curry shrimp, but I fusioned it with some French techniques. I actually have some homemade coconut milk, but instead, I decided to make a sauce supreme (basically a velouté with cream) infused with red curry powder. In a sense, it’s like the cream Cajun or Mexican sauces common in American restaurants — stock, spices, cream, and roux — with a subcontinent/southern-Asian inspiration.

Feel the heat

We live on a canal, which in turn feeds into the mouth of a river, which then feeds into a lagoon, which makes its way to the Atlantic. Which is a roundabout way of saying I could sail around the world from my backyard and return, except I don’t think our canal is deep enough to take the draft of a world-cruising sailboat, even if I could afford one. Our canal does, however, host plenty of salt water blue crab, free for the eating.

I love making a more or less classic bisque, from fresh caught crab straight through to the plate. The many steps involved just kind of make it more real.

Blue Crab Bisque and Shrimp Stir Fry follow. And yes, crabs have been boiled alive to create this post