Chef Linton Hopkins talks shrimp & grits

Chef Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene in Atlanta.

Make no mistake about it, Chef Linton Hopkins is a natural and unflappable teacher. Put him in a room of culinary students and fellow chefs, and Chef will talk continually and calmly throughout a detailed demonstration, keeping his cool through equipment failures and missing ingredients, and remaining for three quarters of an hour after the seminar to encourage the students and talk shop with the pros.

The chef/owner of Atlanta’s Restaurant Eugene and Holeman and Finch Public House brought his unique approach to Southern cuisine to the American Culinary Federation’s Southeastern conference at the Hilton Atlanta last month. This unique approach involved a Dewar of liquid nitrogen and a classic Southeastern coast favorite: shrimp and grits. “You know, I resisted using the liquid nitrogen for many years, until I discovered ways that it improves the flavor of the food,” Hopkins told the audience. Hopkins, by the way, is a James Beard nominee for Best Chef in the Southeast. The winner will be announced in May.

Hopkins encouraged the chefs to remain open to new ideas, with the goal of improving the final dish. “I’m not a big proponent of any one kind of cooking,” he said, hoisting the Dewar flask and pouring liquid nitrogen over dried hominy in the Vitaprep. “Rustic, one-pot, or molecular gastronomy, it’s all cooking.” Regarding the liquid nitrogen, he had a few pointers for newbies to the favored device of Boys with Toys cuisine: be sure to use food grade liquid nitrogen, choose a well-ventilated area, and don’t worry about burns. The veteran of New Orleans’ Mr. B's Bistro assured the students that “a roux burn is worse.”

Hopkins' take on shrimp and grits involved dried hominy, made from heirloom corn grown in North Georgia, pulverized with liquid nitrogen to create a fresh corn flour, cooked with water and finished with cream and a swirl of shrimp butter (inspired by an Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock recipe from "Gift of Southern Cooking"). The liquid nitrogen was also employed to puree frozen Benton's bacon, creating a "bacon salt" garnish. The shrimp and grits were served with a Sea Island Red Pea fritter. Using liquid nitrogen "allows me to stay true to the ingredients that define Southern cooking, but at the same time lets me play with the textures,” Hopkins said.

Hopkins told the audience that a significant amount of his time is devoted to sourcing ingredients to serve at his restaurants. Quoting famed chef Joel Robuchon, Hopkins said that timing is more than getting perfectly prepared food to the customer, it's also getting the freshest taste from the field to the customer. "Using fresh, local ingredients is about making sure this money is staying in Georgia and supporting people I know. It’s about the memory of sitting with your family on the seashore and eating shrimp."

On my next visit to Restaurant Eugene, I'll order the super-dee-duper shrimp and grits. When I want to fulfill that craving at home, I make my version, breakfast-style. This is just like coastal shrimpers would make it, with the little guys caught the day before, served over creamy grits. I used a new technique for creamy grits, which is to cook the grits in water and stock, then stir in butter and cream before serving (a tip from Chef Hopkins). The taste is rich and the texture is velvet.

Shrimp and grits by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Shrimp and Grits, Breakfast Style

Serves 4

Grits

2 cups chicken broth

2 cups water

1 cup stone-ground or quick (not instant) grits
2 tablespoons butter

1/4 cup cream

¼ cup Parmesan cheese, shredded

Salt and pepper to taste

Shrimp

1/2 stick butter

1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined (save the peels for future shrimp broths)

Juice of one lemon (you won’t use it all)

Salt and pepper to taste

1. In a nonstick saucepan, pour in chicken broth and water and heat over a medium flame until bubbles appear at perimeter. Add grits in a slow, steady stream, stirring with a whisk all the while. Stone-ground grits take about 30 minutes of patient and frequent stirring, quick grits take between 5 and 10 minutes of steady whisking action. When grits are just shy of done (depends on your personal taste - loose or leaden), stir in Parmesan and butter and cream and season to taste.

2. For the shrimp, pull out your favorite skillet and melt the butter over medium heat. When butter is foamy, add the shrimp and let cook until pink, just a couple of minutes. Stir to ensure even pinkiness. Freshen with lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste.

3. Serve bowls of creamy grits garnished with shrimp.

Creamy grits by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Text and images copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer, with the exception of the photo of Linton Hopkins from the Restaurant Eugene website.

Creamy Grits are a Satisfying Go-With



Creamy Grits by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 Let's be clear: I was born in the South, I live in the South, and I will love grits 'til my dying day. Growing up, quick white grits with a puddle of butter were a Sunday morning treat alongside scrambled eggs and bacon. My husband introduced me to his ritual of crumbling bacon into the grits for a salty, smoky crunch.

Before the girls came along, I would come home some nights, dead tired from work, put on jammies and fix a bowl of grits, sprinkle them with shredded Cheddar cheese and eat them in front of Thursday night's Must-See-TV. These days, I still turn out grits for breakfast, but I've expanded my options and use grits the way Italian cooks use polenta - as a foil for rich stews such as ratatouille.

Here's my recipe for creamy grits. You can use regular quick grits (never instant!), or the sunny yellow grits made by Dixie Lily.

Creamy grits

2 cups water

1 cup chicken broth

1 cup milk

1 cup grits

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Cheddar cheese, cream cheese, butter and other goodies, p.r.n.


1. In a medium saucepan, preferably nonstick, combine all liquids and place over medium heat. Slowly whisk in grits. Bring to a simmer, whisking occasionally, and cook until the grits are smooth and free of lumps.

2. Stir in cheese, if using, and butter and seasonings. Serve with breakfast or as a base for ratatouille.

Low Country Love: Shrimp & Grits

Breakfast-style shrimp and grits by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

If there is a universal code of comfort food, surely shrimp and grits would be part of it. If I were writing the rules, I would say that comfort food: 1. must be warm, 2. served in a bowl, and 3. be filling to the belly and soothing to the soul. Like the best music and books, comfort food is imbued with a sense of place and a bowl of shrimp and grits, just like Proust's madeleine, pulls me back every time to the South Carolina low country.

I have a South Carolina provenance, spending eight of my growing-up years in the northern part of the state, but I didn’t see the painted houses of Charleston and dine on shrimp and grits until many years after I’d left the red clay for the green hills of Georgia. The upstate town where my family lived, Gaffney, is peach country, where we could buy the juiciest, most luscious peaches imaginable, but shrimp came from the A & P, just like everything else. Before I visited Charleston, I read Pat Conroy's books, in the same way that folks read books before they see movies, I had to read about the low country before I saw it for myself. Conroy is nationally know as the author of the “Prince of Tides“ and “The Great Santini” and dear to this Southerner's heart. He’s a raconteur, a lover of stories and food, and both are given equal treatment in his cookbook, "The Pat Conroy Cookbook." (If I ever meet Mr. Conroy again, I'm going to tell him that the title is factual, but doesn't do the content justice - this book is as much memoir as recipes.)

Conroy's books bring the South Carolina low country, particularly Beaufort, to life - he calls them "psalms" to his hometown. This is his description of the low country, "I cannot look at a salt marsh, veined with salt creeks swollen with the moonstruck tides, without believing in God. The marsh is feminine, voluptuous when the creeks fill up with the billion-footed swarm of shrimp and blue crabs and oysters in the great rush to creation in the spring."

The fishers of the billion-footed swarm are losing out to overseas competion, according to the South Carolina Shrimper's Association Marketing Board. Its website says that 75 percent of the shrimp market has been lost to cheaper pond-raised, imported shrimp. If supporting the American shrimp market is important to you, be sure to look for "American Ocean-Caught Shrimp" on the label.

Charlestonians have many ways with shrimp, (forgive me if this sounds Bubba Gump) pickled shrimp, shrimp paste, and my favorite, shrimp and grits. This is the fisherman’s breakfast, served on the boat or at home, with fresh-from-the-brine shrimp and the Southern standby, grits, which is dried, ground corn. (It’s similar to polenta and a satisfying food for breakfast or supper.) What started as inexpensive, readily available food has become an upscale icon of regional cuisine, and surely on every menu in restaurant-mad Charleston.

My recipe for shrimp and grits isn’t fancy, but does showcase the superlative sweetness of American ocean-caught shrimp. I saute the little guys in butter and finish with a hit of lemon juice. The grits are creamy and rich thanks to milk and chicken broth, butter and Parmesan cheese. My children love this, and it's cooked more often for supper than for breakfast.

Shrimp and Grits, Breakfast Style

Serves 4
Grits
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup water
2 cups milk
1 cup grits (see note below)
2 tablespoons butter
¼ cup Parmesan cheese, shredded
Salt and pepper to taste

Shrimp
1 stick butter
1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined (save the peels for future shrimp broths)
Juice of one lemon (you won’t use it all)
Salt and pepper to taste


1. In a nonstick saucepan, pour in chicken broth, water and milk and heat over a medium flame until bubbles appear at perimeter. (Voice of experience: don’t leave the room, because boiled-over milk is a bear to clean.) Add grits in a slow, steady stream, stirring with a whisk all the while. Stone-ground grits take about 30 minutes of patient and frequent stirring, quick grits take between 5 and 10 minutes of steady whisking action. When grits are just shy of done (depends on your personal taste - loose or leaden), stir in Parmesan and butter and season to taste.

2. Pull out your favorite skillet and melt the butter over medium heat. When butter is foamy, add the shrimp and let cook until pink, just a couple of minutes. Stir to ensure even pinkiness. Freshen with lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste.

3. Serve bowls of creamy grits garnished with shrimp.

A note on grits: Chef cookbooks specify using stone-ground grits, organic preferred. These are not easy to come by for the home cook who shops at suburban supermarkets. And I find the idea of mail-ordering grits to be absurd. Every time I use stone ground grits, my kids pick out the brown specks and accuse me of putting bugs in their food. So, I use ordinary store brand grits in a canister. Look for brand names like Quaker and Jim Dandy and all will be fine. If you live in the South, look for the bag of Dixie Lily brand yellow corn grits. They cook in five minutes and have a perky yellow color that will make you smile.

© 2010, Lucy Mercer.

The quote about salt marshes and God is from "The Pat Conroy Cookbook," published by Random House, © 2004.

A Bowl of Comfort

I tried Shrimp Paste with Creamy Grits from Scott Peacock & Edna Lewis' Gift of Southern Cooking. Three words - "calories" and "worth it." It is essentially shrimp sauteed with onions and garlic in butter and then pulverized in a food processor. It can be stirred into hot, creamy grits or spread on toast. I will certainly make it again, but for the regular, dinnertime rotation, I will make Breakfast Shrimp and Creamy Grits.

I usually keep plain quick grits on hand, no fancy stone-ground stuff, unless I'm lucky enough to chance upon some at a specialty store. I learned the hard way that, in order to protect your investment in stone-ground grits, you absolutely must store them in the freezer. My deepest, darkest kitchen nightmare involves creep-crawly weevils and stone-ground grits that I innocently left unused in the pantry for too long a time.

For the creamy grits, I follow the directions on the package, subbing half and half or milk or even cream for some or all of the liquid, and simmer until thick. This usually means two cups of liquid to 1/2 cup of grits. For the shrimp, I melt a couple tablespoons of butter and sautee a half an onion, chopped, until translucent. I add a pound of peeeled and deveined shrimp and stir in the pan just until it turns pink. The buttery, briny goodness is perfection when served over the grits. This is an excellent 15-minute supper, or a nice treat for a hearty weekend breakfast.