Aunt Carrie's Shrimp Creole...

Aunt Carrie was my great- Grandmother's cook in Augusta, Georgia. She was known through out the town for her wizardry in the kitchen… it was once said she served nineteen hungry men on one old dead roaster and lots of biscuits & gravy. Aunt Carrie could make anything taste good and all the great-grandchildren (myself included) love to be back in Carrie’s kitchen.

Aunt Carrie was known for something else in the old downtown section of Augusta back in the ‘20s to early 1940’s… and that was for "running" a numbers game. Cabbies, shoeshine boys, railroad conductors, even local preachers came to my great- Grandmother’s back door to get in on the action. Carrie would collect their money and betting slips and then send old ‘Honey Boy’ the gardener down to one of the pool halls on Broad Street to place the bets. Later that day, “Honey Boy” would distribute the winnings to some of Augusta’s finest homes. This went on for years, until the day Carrie got caught. Despite having several Federal Judges in our family… Aunt Carrie was sent to Terre Haute Federal Prison for her numbers game shenanigans and damn if her cellmate wasn’t the famous Tokyo Rose. But that’s another story...

After her incarceration - Aunt Carrie returned to my great- Grandmother’s home and continued to cook until her death in 1968 at the age of 88. Here is one of her specialties and my all time favorite…

Aunt Carrie’s Shrimp Creole

Ingredients:
10 slices thick slab bacon
½ cup chopped onion
¼ cup chopped green pepper
¼ cup chopped celery
1 (28-ounce) can tomatoes in tomato puree
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon Tabassco® sauce (or to taste)
1 teaspoon salt
1 bay leaf
2 pounds shrimp, peeled and de-veined
Hot cooked rice

Cook bacon in a large iron skillet or Dutch oven over medium heat until crisp; drain bacon on paper towels. Pour excess fat from skillet, leaving about 3 tablespoons drippings in pan. Add onion, green pepper and celery to skillet and cook, stirring constantly, until vegetables are tender, about 5 minutes.

Stir in tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, Tabassco® Sauce, salt, and bay leaf; cook over medium heat 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add shrimp and crumbled bacon. Cook 5 to 10 minutes longer, just until shrimp are tender. Serve over rice.
Serves 4

Aunt Carrie always said, “The secret to the sauce was her old cured iron skillet.” Which I still use to this day!



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