Best.Breakfast.Ever.

This past weekend my world was all about food, food, and more food. I'm not really sure how that happened but I'm not complaining, believe me!

Saturday was two big food events - brunch at my house for six people, then dinner at the North Bristol Sportsmen's Club for one of their four, annual Smelt Fries. Sunday was brunch with two of my favorite girlfriends (who both ate SALADS! while I ate a full, American breakfast) followed by family dinner with my son and his girlfriend.

Why, you ask, is she sharing her glutenous ways with us? Because I made one of my "best dishes ever" on Saturday for brunch and I was so happy with the outcome that I wanted to share it with you.

A few weeks ago, I bought a bag of raw, deveined, frozen shrimp for a recipe. Obviously, I didn't use the entire bag and I started to worry that the shrimp might get freezer-burned if they weren't used up soon. This drove the decision to make shrimp and grits for the brunch I hosted on Saturday.

Back at Christmas, a friend had made shrimp and grits for a holiday potluck and it was pretty amazing. I remembered her saying it was a Food Network recipe and I also thought she might have said it was attributed to Bobby Flay. However, in the interim, I had been to Luke in New Orleans - John Besh's restaurant - and had a divine, sublime, less "in your face" shrimp and grits than the one from Christmas. I asked the waiter about the grits because, frankly, they were creamy perfection, and I learned that they get their creaminess from the addition of marscapone cheese. Once I got home, I started making my own grits this way and, holy cow, are they wonderful.

So... I took the the Bobby Flay recipe and tweaked it. The most major difference is that I substituted cheddar cheese with marscapone and I ended up with, what I think is, the best shrimp and grits recipe ever. (If I do say so myself!)

Here you go folks! I hope you like it as well as I did. Oh! And it's great as leftovers. We had "breakfast for dinner" on Sunday and I reheated the remaining shrimp and grits (stovetop over low heat) and they were a hit. Just as good as the first round.

- Alex

Modified "Bobby Flay" Shrimp and Grits

Ingredients

• 5 cups water
• 1 cup slow-cook grits (I used Quaker)
• 3 tablespoons butter
• Salt to taste
• 1 8 oz container of marscapone cheese
• 1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined (I used frozen, raw)
• 6 slices bacon, chopped
• 4 teaspoons lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
• 1 cup thinly sliced green onion (including the green parts)
• 1 large clove garlic, minced

Directions

Bring water to a boil. Add grits and cook until water is absorbed, about 15-20 minutes and grits are thick but stirrable. Remove from heat and stir in salt, butter, and marscapone cheese. Grits can take a lot of salt so taste them and make sure they taste good on their own, before you add the shrimp.

Rinse shrimp and pat dry. Cook the bacon and retain the grease. The easiest way to do this is to cook the bacon in a fry pan and leave the grease in the pan. However, I don't like frying bacon so I cook it in the broiler and save the grease to a bowl after the bacon is done. Chop the bacon.

In a frying pan, add shrimp to the bacon grease. Cook until shrimp turn pink. Add lemon juice, chopped bacon, parsley, scallions and garlic. Saute for 3 minutes.

Spoon grits into a serving bowl. Add shrimp mixture and mix well. Serve immediately.