I like to call my mom the “Messy Chef”.  While she creates the most fantastic meals, she also creates a fantastic mess!  On the last day of her trip here in Louisiana (with my sister), she wanted to make a home cooked meal for us all to share.  In addition to that, my mother had just come back from a cooking class in Italy and I wanted to see what she had learned. My fiancé also wanted to make some home cooked jambalaya for our guests. Together, we ventured to the grocery store and bought some fresh crabmeat, gulf shrimp and Andouille sausage.

Fresh Cut Ravioli

During my mother’s trip abroad, she learned how to make hand cut pasta and delicious sauces. So to begin her meal, she made fresh ravioli stuffed with crabmeat and covered in a delicious sauce! This was our appetizer of the evening, but we could have just as easily eaten that.

Jambalaya

My fiancé made spicy Andouille sausage and chicken jambalaya. To complement the jambalaya my mom made one of my favorite dishes, Shrimp Mozambique; a Portuguese dish using lots of garlic and beer. Except my mother doesn’t use beer (sorry I can’ tell you what she uses, family secret!). The dish originated from Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony. It is slightly spicy from the piri piri pepper (you can substitute this with any hot sauce) and it goes great with rice or crusty bread to soak up all that delicious sauce. One important step of this shrimp dish is to clean the shrimp but leave the peel on to lock in the flavor. Of course remove the peel as you eat it, which makes it a messy dish but well worth it!

Shrimp Mozambique

To sum up the evening, crabmeat ravioli, shrimp Mozambique and jambalaya.  I would say Portuguese meets Cajun was a successful evening (and of course a little bit of Italy for fun). We all slipped into food comas, happily.