Shrimp Po' Boys

I wanted to go to Papa Roux for dinner last night, but it didn’t happen. We had a grumpy 1-year old on our hands that forgot to nap enough during the day, so we decided to stay in and cook. By that point I had my heart set on Cajun, so I wanted to make shrimp po’ boys for dinner. I ran to the store to get what I needed, and realized all I had to buy was shrimp and French bread. I had everything else at home, since the rest of the ingredients are pretty standard in everyone’s kitchens. It was a pretty cheap trip…maybe that’s why they call it a po’ boy, huh? Anyway…

Emeril has a classic recipe here, and I basically followed it with just a couple of small changes. Here’s how it went down:

Shrimp Po' Boy ingredients:
1 lb. raw medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
All-purpose flour
Yellow cornmeal
Creole seasoning (I use Tony’s)
Mayo
Spicy mustard
Hot sauce (I used Tobasco)
Lettuce
Tomato
French bread
See? Don’t you already have most of that stuff in your pantry/fridge? Told you!

For the shrimp, I dredged them in a mixture of flour, cornmeal and Creole seasoning.

Equal parts flour and cornmeal, and maybe a tablespoon of seasoning. Then I fried them in vegetable oil over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes until golden and transferred them to a paper towel.

For the sauce (LOVE sauce!) I mixed up about ¼ cup mayo, 1 tablespoon spicy mustard, 1tablespoon Creole seasoning and a few dashes of hot sauce.

Complete with Gerber baby spoon.

Then I just spread the bread with sauce and piled up the lettuce, tomato (I had some beautiful yellow tomatoes from our neighbors’ garden) and fried shrimp.

"Oh hey! Where are you from? New Orleans? That's cool. I'm from Indy. SO NICE to meet you..."

One of those humble but hearty sandwiches that fills you up and leaves the roof of your mouth feeling like you just ate some awesome rustic bread!
We ate on the couch watching preseason football and feeling happy about life. And THEN I remembered I’d had a muffaletta for lunch so it was an all-around New Orleans kind of day.
Some beignets would really have made it perfect.