A Misapprehension, a Dubious Venture and Score One!

Misapprehension:  anytime someone mentioned a Red Velvet cake or cupcake, I was quick to tell them it was made with tomato soup.  It's a memory fragment from a Southern cook book.  And it's also dead, solid wrong.

It was made with food coloring until WW2 shortages made inventive cooks turn to beet juice for coloring.  Today, foodandwine.com is kinda, sorta asserting that their Red Velvet Beet Cake is something new -- and healthful, too! 

A Dubious Venture - Dark Chocolate Waffles.  The picture in foodandwine.com looked like the waffles were burned.  Their recipe also called for olive oil rather than vegetable oil. 

Their recipe is from scratch but my version arises from practicality (and laziness) and it's this:  buy a box of pancake/waffle mix, open it and add 1 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder.  Seal container and shake until dry ingredients are well mixed.  Proceed as usual except I'd leave off the maple syrup - maybe honey instead?

Score One!
Richie bought 6/10th of a pound of shrimp.  I would have made Thai yellow curry shrimp, but the bottle was empty.  So I came up with this:

Sabor de Mexico Camarons
6/10ths of a lb. of raw shrimp, peeled
2 T olive oil
2 slices red onion, minced
1 teas. crushed garlic
Splash of Pico Paco salsa
1 T pickled jalapeno "juice"
2 cubes frozen Dorot cilantro (fruit section, supermarket)
Splash of lemon juice

Put everything BUT the shrimp in a large skillet and start heating it.  When it starts to bubble, add the shrimp and stir fry until they're pink.  Serve this dish over hot, plain-flavored refried beans.  The shrimp  sauce flows over the beans and they meld together beautifully.

Richie liked it so much he gave the classic stamp of approval around here for experimental recipes:  You could serve that to company!