Blueberry Pie

I don't use a recipe, but the one thing I do before using berries in a pie is cook them with sugar and corn starch.  If I don't, I run the risk of ending up with a runny filling, which makes the bottom crust soggy.  Yuck.

Shrimp Etouffee

I don't have a recipe for making the sauce; I just make it.  In reality, it was much darker than the pictures taken with flash make it look, but I didn't do any color corrections, so it looks way too orange-y.

That's the sauce, after simmering for somewhere between two and three hours in the dutch oven.

In the end, it tasted really good.  The shrimp went in for only the last few minutes, before serving over rice, with sugar snap peas.

Shrimp and Pork Potstickers

I'm pretty sure I found the recipes for the dough (2 c. flour and 3/4 c. hot water), filling, and dipping sauce on Chow.com.  While I keep lots of Asian ingredients on hand, and often do Asian inspired dishes or marinades, this is my first stab at dumplings, or in this case, potstickers.  The same dough can be used for gyoza or shumai, if it's rolled a little thinner than for potstickers.

First, we have the formed dumplings, waiting to be fried, then steamed.

The cooking part (fry for a couple of minutes on the flat bottom, then add water, cover, and steam for three more) went off without a hitch.  I served it with a dipping sauce and asparagus.

The result was surprisingly good.  The ones I've gotten in a restaurant usually have neater pleating on the dough that forms the crescent shape, but the taste really isn't any better.  The only thing I would change next time is to either use reduced sodium soy sauce, or go 3:1 regular soy to water, in the dipping sauce.  The flavor was very Asian, but a little too salty, even for this salt lover.  The good news is that I got the hang of pleating the one side of the dough fairly quickly, and really only ended up with two or three sloppy looking ones.

It gives me one more thing to do with ground pork besides making breakfast sausage.